Abyss Page 27

  “Into the Depths of Eternity,” the Givin rasped from the end of the line. “If you sink into that, even we cannot pull you back.”

  “Great.” Ben gently pushed his father ahead, directly behind Rhondi, then slipped into line himself and reached forward to continue holding his father’s arm. “Hear that, Dad?”

  “Got it, son.” Luke sounded more amused than concerned. “Thanks for being sure.”

  “No problem,” Ben replied. “At your age, the hearing starts to go.”

  As Ben spoke, he looked down to make certain that he was following exactly in his father’s steps—then gasped aloud at the face he saw staring up at him. He had only seen that face when he was too young to remember it, but he had viewed plenty of holos of it, and there was no mistaking those ice-blue eyes and that tousled, sandy-brown hair.

  Anakin Solo.

  At the sound of Ben’s gasp, his father stopped and turned to look, then also gasped. “Anakin?”

  Anakin’s image floated up, as if emerging from the reflection of a boulder on shore. His lips were just breaking the surface of the lake, and his icy-blue eyes swung in Luke’s direction.

  “Uncle …Luke?” Anakin’s voice was gurgling and uncertain, like a Mon Calamari’s. “Is that really you?”

  Luke nodded, and his Force aura grew cold and heavy with the guilt that he still felt, a decade and a half later, about sending Anakin on the mission that had ended his life.

  “Yes, Anakin. It’s …”

  Luke’s voice cracked, and he seemed too shocked to continue. Ben could understand why—he hadn’t even known Anakin, and he felt stunned, confused, happy, sorry …and suspicious. Everything that the Mind Walkers did was for the purpose of keeping him and his father beyond shadows until they died. It seemed utterly impossible that they were actually speaking to Anakin Solo—almost as impossible as it was to leave their bodies to journey through the Maw as pure Force presences.

  Deciding that whatever was happening, it would be best to buy his father some time to recover, Ben said, “Hello, Anakin. It’s an honor to, uh, meet you.”

  Anakin’s gaze shifted to Ben. “Ben?” he asked. “Has it been that long?”

  Ben nodded. “I’m afraid so. I’m the same age now that you were …” He paused, wondering whether it was wise to remind an apparition of its death, then decided that it would be an insult to be anything less than honest. “When you died.”

  To Ben’s relief, Anakin did not seem at all surprised. He merely smiled, then said, “Try not to follow my lead, okay?”

  Ben chuckled despite himself, then said, “I’m doing my best.”

  “Good.” Anakin’s expression grew serious. “Be much more careful than I was, Ben. Learn from my mistakes.”

  “I have—not from your mistakes, I mean, but from your example.” Ben glanced over and, seeing that his father looked like he had recovered his composure, he added, “You’re a legend, Anakin. Your sacrifice saved the Jedi. There hasn’t been another Jedi Knight as strong as you since.”

  Anakin scowled, then looked back to Luke. “You must be going soft on them.”

  Luke smiled, but shook his head. “Not at all. Ben is right.” He squatted down so that he could be closer to Anakin’s face. “I have high hopes for Ben, but there hasn’t been a Jedi Knight like you again. Losing you was as great a loss to the Order as it was to your family.”

  Anakin’s eyes grew worried. “It shouldn’t have been. The Order can’t wait for a great Jedi Knight to lead it. That’s what everyone thought I was, and when I died, too much died with me.” He turned to Ben. “Don’t make the mistake I did, don’t let anyone push you into that. Every Jedi Knight has to be his own light, because the light shouldn’t go out when one Jedi dies.”

  Ben nodded. “Okay, Anakin,” he said. “I think I actually get it.”

  “Because wise words are always easy to understand,” Luke said. “I’ll take your advice to heart, Anakin. But I want you to know that what you did on Baanu Raas saved the entire Order. Thank you for that.”

  “I wasn’t alone.” Anakin’s eyes closed. It appeared for a moment that he was going to sink back beneath the water, then he asked, “What about Tahiri? Is she well?”

  Luke’s lips tightened, and Ben knew that his father was afraid of answering—that if he began to speak, the whole terrible truth would stream forth, what Jacen had done to her, what Jacen had become—what Jaina had been forced to do to stop him.

  “She will be, Anakin,” Ben said. “I promise you that.”

  If Anakin had sensed anything in Luke’s hesitation, he did not show it. He merely nodded.

  “Good. Tell her that I still love her.” His head tipped back, and he said, “Now go. You don’t have much time.”

  Anakin’s face sank as quickly as it had come to the surface, leaving Ben and his father to stand there in the cold water, wondering what they had just seen, whether it been real or a phantasm …and whether the difference mattered.

  Finally, Ben asked, “Was that …was that a Force ghost?”

  Luke thought for a moment, then simply shrugged. “I have no idea, Ben.” He turned back toward the woman in the mist and motioned for Rhondi to continue, “But whatever it was, it was him.”

  Rhondi started forward again, and, despite Anakin’s warning, Ben knew better than to try to convince his father to turn back. Whoever—whatever—that woman in the mist was, she was a part of what was threatening his Order, the Order that Anakin had died to protect, and Luke Skywalker was not going to turn back until she told him what she knew.

  They continued onward for more than Ben had thought the distance to the woman was—another hundred paces at least. Then his father lurched forward, his front leg suddenly dropping to the thigh in the dark water.

  “Dad!” Ben grabbed him by the arm and was nearly pulled in after him, then he caught them both in the Force and lifted them back onto the path that Rhondi had chosen for them. “Are you all right?”

  Instead of answering, his father merely looked into the water. For one terrible instant, Ben feared that he hadn’t been quick enough, that some part of his father’s essence had already vanished into the Depths of Eternity.

  Then Ben saw what his father was looking at.

  When Ben had spotted Anakin’s face below the surface, he had felt astonished, confused, even frightened. This time, he just hurt. “Mom?” he gasped.

  His mother’s green eyes snapped open. She floated to the surface, looking neither happy nor confused, but worried. Frightened. Maybe even angry.

  Her gaze snapped from Ben to Luke and back again. “You two shouldn’t be here,” she said. “What’s the matter with you?”

  Ben couldn’t answer. He had a lump in his throat the size of his fist, and the words just wouldn’t come. But to his astonishment, his father merely smiled and dropped back into a squat.

  “Hello, Mara,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”

  Her expression softened. “You, too, Skywalker,” she said. “But I’m serious. You can’t be—”

  “We’re fine,” Luke assured her.

  “Not if you’re here, you’re not.” Her mouth tightened with a sudden wave of horror. “You’re not—”

  “We’re alive, Mara, on a mission.” Luke glanced around the lake, then added, “One of the strangest ones I’ve ever had, but we’re still working it. Can you tell me what this place is, exactly?”

  “I told you,” the Givin rasped from behind Ben. “The Lake of Apparitions.”

  “Not what he meant, bonehead,” Ben said, his irritation jolting him out of his shock. “Hi, Mom. Uh … long time, no see.”

  The wisecrack finally brought back the radiant smile that Ben had been aching to see again for nearly three years now. “Ben! You’ve grown …and more than just taller.”

  Ben nodded and squatted next to his father. “In a lot of ways.”

  He longed to lean down and kiss his mother’s watery cheek, or at least to reach out and touch it. Bu
t she was only a reflection, and he did not dare risk it, fearing that he might shatter the moment, or send her sinking back beneath the surface.

  Instead he asked, “Mom, what can you tell us about this place? It’s pretty weird.”

  “You’re talking to a dead woman, Ben. Of course it’s weird.” She looked away for a moment, thinking, then shook her head. “I don’t know what I can tell you. It’s different for everyone, I imagine.”

  “And for you?” his father asked.

  “For me, it’s a place of reflection,” she said. “To consider what I’ve done.”

  Luke’s brows rose, alarmed, but also in pain. “Mara, are you suffering?”

  “I’ve done some things that cause me anguish, yes,” she said.

  Luke shook his head. “But you didn’t know better,” he said. “Palpatine tricked you.”

  Mara gave Luke a sad smile and looked as though she would have liked to touch him as much as Ben would have liked to touch her.

  “I made my peace with Palpatine a long time ago. You know that.” She turned to Ben. “But I didn’t serve him my whole life, and that has been both my blessing and my curse.”

  Ben frowned. “Mom, I don’t understand.”

  “Jacen,” she said simply. “I didn’t go after him as a Jedi, Ben. I went after him as a hunter … a killer.”

  Ben felt like he had been stabbed in the heart. “But he was a Sith Lord!”

  “Not when I went after him,” she said. “And you know that wasn’t why I did it.”

  Ben sank onto his haunches. Had his father not grabbed him by the arm, he would have fallen into the water. Because he did know. His mother had gone after Jacen because of what Jacen was doing to him, because Ben had been too ashamed to share the truth with his father, and he had asked his mother to keep his secret.

  “Mom, I’m so sorry,” he said. “It’s all—”

  “It isn’t, Ben, and I’m not telling you this because I need your sorrow.” She smiled up at him. “I’m a bit beyond that now, don’t you think?”

  Ben forced himself to return her smile. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “I want you to learn from what I did, Ben. It’s not the result that counts, but the action.” Her eyes grew hard and angry, then she said, “Jacen’s goals were noble; he acted for the good of the galaxy. But his acts were horrific, and nothing can change that. Even if he did bring peace to the galaxy, the stain remains, and it will darken him for eternity. Do you understand that?”

  The lump had returned to Ben’s throat, so large and hard now that he could only barely croak a simple “Yes.”

  “It’s not about the legacy you leave, it’s about the life you live,” she continued. “Remember that, live by that.”

  “I’ll remember, Mom. I promise.”

  “Good.” His mother’s hand rose and touched the surface of the water, a prisoner trying to reach through the wall of a transparisteel cell. “That’s what I need from you, Ben. If you do that, I will be at peace. That’s my promise.”

  She started to sink. “Now go.”

  “Mara,” Luke said. “Wait.”

  “You don’t have time.” She stopped sinking, and only her lips remained at the surface. “Forget her.”

  Luke glanced toward the woman in the mist, but said, “That’s not what I wanted to—”

  “Luke, I know,” Mara said. “But she’s one of the old ones. Leave her alone …trust me.”

  Luke shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “Not yet.”

  “Then there’s nothing I can do,” she said. “I love you, Luke. But if you have to do this, may the Force be with you.”

  With that, she closed her eyes and sank beneath the surface.

  Luke remained crouching over her reflection, eyes closed and chin dropped, for an hour. Or perhaps it was only a few seconds, Ben had no idea. The important thing was that neither Ryontarr nor the Givin was inclined to interrupt, and Ben did not dare.

  Rhondi was not so patient. After a time, she pulled Luke to his feet, then turned back toward the near end of the lake.

  “No.” Luke pulled free and turned back toward the mists. “I need to keep going forward.”

  Before Ben could object, Rhondi was shaking her own head. “I know who Mara Jade was, and who she was to you. If she doesn’t want you walking into the Mists of Forgetfulness, then it’s time to turn back.”

  Luke’s brow rose at the name she had given to the mists, but he did not turn away. “You’re probably right.” Without turning to face Ben, he said, “Son, you go on back. If I don’t join you—well, soon—take the Shadow and—”

  “Dad, the Mists of Forgetfulness!” Ben interrupted. “What part of that doesn’t scream, Mom’s right—get the blazes out of here?”

  His father’s Force aura did not even crack a ripple of amusement. “Ben, this isn’t a debate.”

  “You’re kriffing right it isn’t,” Ben said. “If you’re crazy enough to keep going, you’re too crazy to give me orders. And I’m not crazy enough yet to follow them. I’m going with you.”

  His father dropped his head, either weighing Ben’s words or gathering his resolve, then said, “Fine. Come on.”

  Rhondi shot Ben an angry glare, then took Luke’s arm and started to lead the way toward the mists again. As they walked, the gallery of reflections continued to peer up from beneath the water, and Ben began to think about his father’s weakened body back on the Shadow, wondering how much time they really had left—if they had any.

  “Hey, Dad?”

  “I’m not turning back.”

  “I know,” Ben said. “But no more stops, okay? At your age, you probably know a lot of dead people. If we stop to talk to all of them, we’re going to be down there with them.”

  Luke chuckled. “Okay, Ben. Not all of them.”

  They had traveled perhaps another two hundred paces when Ben looked up and realized that the mists seemed as far away as ever. Half convinced they were not actually moving, he took his eyes off his father’s heels just long enough to glance back over his shoulder—then crashed headlong into his father’s back.

  “Stang! Sorry, Dad,” Ben said. “But I don’t think we’re ever going to get there. Those mists are just pulling …”

  Ben let his sentence trail off as he turned forward and saw that his father was staring down into the water again. Kriff, he muttered. He didn’t want to see to anyone else; after his mother’s warning, stopping to talk to anyone else was going to feel like a betrayal. What he really needed to do was get his father moving again, so they could turn around and go back, like she had told them to do.

  Steeling himself to be rude—or at least quick—Ben slipped forward …and felt his veins run cold. Peering up from the lake was a gaunt, familiar face with brown hair, a thin Solo nose, and the yellow eyes of a Sith Lord.

  Recalling that neither his mother nor Anakin had responded until their names were spoken aloud, he bit back the urge to utter his former Master’s name. The last thing Ben wanted was to speak to Darth Caedus right now. There was a time when he might have wanted to speak to Jacen—but even that urge had been purged from him in the Kathol Rift, under the tutelage of his Aing-Tii instructor, Tador’Ro.

  Not so with Ben’s father, though. Luke squatted down, then deliberately said, “Jacen.”

  Immediately the yellow eyes darkened to brown, and the reflection grew a little less gaunt and haunted as it rose through the water. When it reached the surface, the eyes, as sad now as they had just been hard, looked from Luke to Ben.

  “I won’t ask your forgiveness,” Jacen said.

  “Good.” Luke’s voice was not unkind, merely firm. “Because I don’t think I could give it.”

  A half smile crept across Jacen’s lips. “Honest to the end, Uncle Luke. That’s one of the things I always appreciated about you.” His gaze shifted back to Ben. “I want you to know—all the anger and the hate, I didn’t bring it with me. Tell Jaina that I forgive her.”

  Ben’s tempe
r immediately began to blow. “You forgive her?” he spat. “Do you have any idea what you put her through? You pompous, self-righteous—”

  “Ben!” Luke barked. “That isn’t the reason I let you come along. Remember what you just promised your mother.”

  The rebuke was more of a nudge than a slap—a gentle, deliberate reminder that left no doubt in Ben’s mind that his father had been expecting this meeting from the moment they encountered Anakin Solo’s apparition. This was the reason his father had insisted that they keep going. Ben just didn’t happen to think it was a good idea. Whatever Jacen—or Caedus—said to them was sure to be a lie—or, at best, a half-truth. But Ben kept quiet. He did not doubt that his father did have a plan, and if Ben allowed his own outrage and disgust to drive Jacen away prematurely, he would just be interfering with it.

  So he nodded and said, “You’re right, Dad.” He turned to Jacen. “I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  The sneer that came to Jacen’s mouth left no doubt about how likely that was. “Don’t you think we’re past that sort of nonsense, Ben? I did what I did, and you have every right to feel as you do. All I ask is that you show me the courtesy of being honest about it.”

  Ben’s chest tightened. “Fine,” he said. “Honestly, I think you’re the same kriffing sleemo you were when you were alive, and I’m glad you’re dead.”

  Jacen flashed one of those crooked Solo grins. “Better,” he said. “I hope you remember what to do with that anger.”

  “Ben has developed a few alternative techniques for that,” Luke said evenly. “But since we’re all being honest here, would you answer a question for me?”

  Jacen kept his gaze fixed on Ben. “Why not?” he asked. “You did come a long way to ask it.”

  Farther than you know, thought Ben.

  Luke merely smiled in gratitude. “I appreciate that.”

  Ben thought his father was going to ask about the woman in the mist, or her relationship to the mental illness plaguing the Order’s Jedi Knights. He thought his father might possibly ask about whether she had somehow been responsible for corrupting Jacen himself, or even whether Darth Caedus had something to do with the problems currently troubling the Order.