Abyss (36 page)

“And do you remember what I said?” Ben demanded. There was no sense risking any miscommunication. “Tell me.”

“You said that if
you
die beyond shadows,
Rolund
dies in that cabin,” Rhondi croaked.

“That’s right,” Ben said, and he realized that he had finally made his decision. Rhondi was trying to trick him, to remove the threat to her brother so that she would be free to kill Ben. “And
am
I going to die while we’re beyond shadows?”

Rhondi shook her head. “Not if I can help it.”

“Good,” Ben said. He climbed onto a hovergurney adjacent to his father’s and quickly strapped his legs in place. “Then we have nothing to worry about.”

Ben set the drip on his IV bags, then lay down on the gurney and used the Force to secure the straps over his chest.

“Rolund has enough food and water to last a month,” Ben said, reassuring himself as much as Rhondi. “He’ll be fine.”

Rhondi appeared less than convinced, but she merely looked away and did not bother to argue. “Are you ready?”

Ben nodded. “More than,” he said. “What do I do?”

“Just turn toward the light,” Rhondi told him. “Listen to my voice and breathe. We’ll go together.”

Ben turned toward the purple light.

“There is no life,” Rhondi began.

More than familiar with the techniques of Force meditation, Ben inhaled as she spoke, then, during the silent pause that followed, exhaled into the purple light writhing beyond the viewport.

“There is only the Force.”

Ben exhaled again, and felt himself drifting toward the light.

“Picture the number
one
in your mind,” Rhondi said. “That is the first level of ascension.
There is no life …”

Again, Ben exhaled into the light.

“There is only the Force.”

Ben exhaled again.

“Now you see the number
two,
” Rhondi said. “There is no time …”

Ben exhaled once more.

A few minutes later—or it might have been a few hours—they reached the number
7
, and Ben felt himself slip free. He had a thousand questions about what was happening to him, about how long they had been gone and what would become of his abandoned body. But when Rhondi appeared next to him, looking more refreshed and beautiful than she ever had before, he had only one question on his mind.

“How do we find my father?”

Rhondi extended her hand. “Take my hand,” she said. “Think of your father and walk with me into the light.”

Ben did as she instructed, and together they walked into the crackling purple radiance beyond the viewport. At once, he was filled with an eternal, boundless bliss beyond anything he had ever experienced. He became one with the Force, melted into it and was filled with a calm joy as vast as the galaxy itself. How long he and Rhondi hung there together, Ben would never know. It was less than an eyeblink, as long as eternity.

Then a voice said,
Come
.

And suddenly Ben was looking out on a narrow mountain lake with a surface as still as black glass. From one shore rose a face of sheer granite, sloping up toward a domed summit lit in the lazuline light of a blue sun. Along the other shore lay a boulder-strewn meadow filled with hummocks of knee-high moss and rivulets of purling water. Directly ahead, his father stood next to Ryontarr and the Givin, looking toward a half-hidden female form floating in the silver mists that concealed the far end of the lake.

Ben released Rhondi’s hand and started forward, no longer consumed by the same sense of urgency that had been troubling him back on the station. True, his father had grown perilously weak over the last couple of weeks. And true, his own life was also in peril, since the Mind Walkers were trying to kill
him
. But Ben had left such mundane concerns behind with his body. He had swum in the incomprehensible infinity of the universe, drunk of the pure joy of eternal existence, and now he understood.

Life and death
were
the same, because moments did not vanish, could not be consumed like air or water or nutripaste. They existed at once and forever, spread across the entire continuity of being, the same way atoms were scattered across the vastness of the universe. Just as atoms gathered together in clumps of energy, which living beings perceived as matter, moments gathered in packets of minutes and hours, which mortal creatures perceived as time passing.

But those packets were no more the essence of time than sunlight was the essence of a star, or heat the essence of fire. They were simply the perceptions through which the minds of finite beings experienced
infinity, the sensations through which their bodies detected the existence of themselves and everything around them.

Ben reached the lake and halted at his father’s side, opposite Ryontarr and the Givin. The female form was no more than fifty paces distant, close enough for Ben to see that she was not quite human, with a cascade of saffron hair that seemed to hang down to the water, and a pair of tiny bright eyes set in sockets so deep they looked like wells.

When his father did not immediately seem to notice him, Ben said, “Whoa, Dad … that was some trip.”

Luke snorted in amusement, then turned to Ben with a wry smile. “You weren’t supposed to find that out.”

Ben nodded, and suddenly felt like he had made the wrong decision. If time and life were illusions, what did it matter if he went mad? What did it matter if his father died and Ben never reported to the Masters? Both had
already
happened, or they never would. In the end, all he had done was disobey an order.

Ben dropped his gaze. “Sorry about that,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been a good idea for me to go back to Coruscant—not with things the way they are, thanks to Daala.”

Luke frowned. “Because?”

“Think about where we are, Dad,” Ben said, forcing himself to meet his father’s gaze. “Or at least where our bodies are, and what everyone who’s gone barvy has in common.”

Luke nodded. “Shelter.” He cocked his head and studied Ben for a moment. “Where you …?”

“I think
so
.” Ben glanced over at Rhondi, then lowered his voice, “Dad, nobody ever actually attacked me. But I have this feeling—this
really
strong feeling—that they’re trying to kill us.”

Luke gave him a smile. “Ben, it’s not paranoid if it’s true.” He tipped his head toward his two escorts. “These two have been leading me into one trap after another since we left the station.”

Ben felt his eyes widen, then he frowned over at Ryontarr and the Givin. “And you’re still here? Why?”

Luke shrugged, then looked back toward the woman in the mist. “I still have a few questions.”

“Your questions can wait.” It wasn’t Ben who said this, but
Rhondi. She reached forward from behind Ben and took his arm. “Get your father. I kept my side of the bargain; now we need to go.”

“Bargain?”
Ryontarr leaned out to glare past the Skywalkers, while the Givin slipped around behind Rhondi. “Why would you do
that
?”

The clear hostility in the Gotal’s voice brought to mind the urgency Ben had felt back in the station.

“That’s right, Dad.” He took his father’s arm and started to pull. “You’re pretty close to dying. We’ve got to go.”

Luke gently pulled his arm free. “In a minute, Ben.” He turned to Ryontarr, then added, “I’ve known for a while that you’re trying to stall me. What I haven’t been able to figure out is
why
.”

“And you expect me to tell you?” the Gotal asked. “Because we were both Jedi … once?”

“That would be the courteous thing,” Luke confirmed. “But the reason you’re going to tell me is because I’m leaving if you don’t.”

Ryontarr shot Rhondi a withering scowl, then nodded and reluctantly pointed a taloned finger toward the woman in the mist. “Because she desires it.”

Luke turned back toward the lake. “The lady in the mist?”

As his father asked this, Ben looked toward the woman and instantly felt a chill of danger sense. Hers was the same needy presence that he had sensed on the way into the Maw … and the grasping touch from which he had retreated as a two-year-old.

Ben took his father’s arm again. “Dad, I
really
think it’s time to go. I’m pretty sure she’s what was reaching for me when I was at Shelter.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me,” Luke said, not allowing Ben to pull him away. He turned to Ryontarr. “We’ll leave as soon as we know what she wants with us.”

“I have no idea,” Ryontarr said, spreading his hands. “Perhaps you should walk out and ask her.”

Rhondi said, “Ben, that’s not a good …” but she let her sentence trail away as the Givin stepped close behind her. Ben tried again to pull his father away from the lake, but Luke seemed almost Force-rooted in place.

“I need to figure this out. This lady … I think she knows what corrupted Jacen, maybe even what’s been driving our Jedi Knights
mad.” Luke stepped into the shallow water close to shore. “I won’t be long, Ben. You go on back.”

“I’m not going
anywhere
without you.” Ben looked back at Rhondi, then added, “And you’re not going anywhere without me—and a better
guide
than Ryontarr.”

Rhondi shook her head in dismay, but she stepped forward and grasped his wrist. “Take your father’s arm.”

Ben followed her into the water and did as she instructed. When his father did not object, she began to lead them forward, sticking close to the meadow. To Ben’s surprise—and unease—the boulders and hummocks along the shore cast reflections not of themselves, but of Wookiees, Barabels, humans, Chadra-Fan, and a few species Ben did not even recognize. These reflections, however, did not seem to lie directly
on
the surface. Instead, they appeared about a dozen centimeters below, just where the water grew too dark to see any deeper.

“This is the Lake of Apparitions,” Ryontarr said, following behind Ben. “Perhaps you see why.”

“Yeah,” Ben said. Actually, he would have been just as happy not knowing the name—but he was pretty certain the Gotal realized that. “Thanks for the hint.”

“My pleasure,” Ryontarr said. “And this end, we call the Mirror of Remembrance.”

“Catchy names,” Ben said. “I’ll make a note of them for the guidebook.”

As they waded forward, they did not make any sloshing sounds, or even disturb the surface of the lake. And why should they have? They were there only in spirit and not in body, and Force presences did not normally impact the physical world … assuming this
was
a physical world.

It sure seemed like one. The water was no more than calf-deep, but it was dark, and he could not see his feet. After only a few steps, he stepped on a submerged stone and stumbled, and Rhondi quickly ordered, “Step only where I step. The lake is generally shallow, but there are places where it drops off.”

“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.”