The alert strobing, Ben could take. And the chirping and wailing of the alarms, he had already silenced with a few well-placed blaster bolts. But the acrid smoke rising out of the equipment cabinets—that he could not stop. No matter how poorly the control room’s air exchangers worked, no matter how badly the fumes stung his eyes or burned his throat, he did not dare tamper with such alien technology. There was no telling what he might blow up: himself, the entire habitat … even the Maw itself.

And there were some things a good Jedi just did not risk.

Deciding he had made every preparation possible, Ben turned back to the entry hatch. He made one last inspection of his spot-welds, then nodded in satisfaction and shut off the energy feed to his plasma torch. No one would be sneaking through that door when he wasn’t watching.

Tossing the welding mask and gloves aside as he walked, Ben descended to the front of the trilevel control room. There, bathed in the flickering purple light from the writhing radiance beyond the view-port, his emaciated father lay strapped to a hovergurney from the Shadow’s medbay. Both arms had fresh IV catheters in them, one delivering hydration and the other nutrients, but Ben did not know how much longer the fluid drips could keep his father alive. Both of the guides had died more than a week ago, the Givin because Ben had no idea how to insert an intravenous catheter through an exoskeleton, the other one because the Shadow simply did not carry the saline-free drips necessary to avoid poisoning a Gotal.

Several meters away sat Rhondi Tremaine, looking human again with fairly clean yellow hair and cheeks that were only slightly hollow. A pair of stun cuffs from the Shadow’s security stores connected her wrist to a metal floor beam that Ben had exposed for the purpose. Her brows were arched in fear, and her eyes were rimmed in red from weeping.

“Ben, please,” she said. “What are you doing?”

Ben did not answer because he wasn’t sure yet. His father’s orders had been clear: under no circumstances was Ben to go beyond shadows. If something went wrong, he was to report back to the Masters and make sure the Jedi knew about the dark power hiding in the Maw.

But that had been before Ben had started to go barvy.

He knew the symptoms of paranoid delusional disorder, and he realized he was suffering from most of them: the unshakable belief that his life and his father’s were in danger, the all-consuming fear that haunted his every thought, the reasons he could always find to dismiss any fact that did not support his own convictions. And yet the Mind Walkers were trying to kill him. While he might doubt his own sanity, that Ben did not doubt at all.

No one had attacked him directly, of course. The Mind Walkers were too clever for that. Instead, they had depleted the Shadow’s medbay to the point that he could no longer treat even a simple infection. They had consumed so much nutripaste that Ben had been reduced to foraging old dehydros from other vessels in the hangar. And the Shadow’s recycling system had lost so much water to the people who drank and left that it was having trouble purifying itself.

“Ben,” Rhondi said. “You can’t leave Rolund in that little room to die. That’s just … sick.”

Though Ben did not say so, he thought Rhondi was probably right. It was certainly not normal to leave a man welded inside a sleeping cabin. It wasn’t normal to trap the door with a thermite tamper guard, either.

But it was necessary, should Ben decide to go through with his plan. And he was beginning to realize he probably had no choice. As bad as it was that both of Master Horn’s children had lost their minds, to have Ben Skywalker return to Coruscant alone, delusional, and paranoid would be a catastrophe for the Jedi Order matched only by Luke Skywalker’s death. And it could easily get worse. In Ben’s demented state, he might fail to report what he and his father had found in the Maw … or he might not be believed.

Rhondi seemed to take Ben’s silence as a statement of intention. “Don’t do this,” she pleaded. “If Rolund starves in there, he’ll be lost until his presence disperses into the Force. At least bring him in here, where he can see the meditation chamber and find his way back beyond shadows.”

Ben frowned and asked, “Didn’t I explain this to you earlier?”

Despite the cynical edge, Ben’s question was sincere. He had been under a lot of stress lately, trying everything he could think of to bring his father back to his body, and it just seemed possible that he had forgotten to execute this critical part of his plan.

Instead of replying, Rhondi started to cry. Ben decided he needed to phrase his question a little more gently. He reached out with the Force and turned her head toward him.

“Did I explain this to you?” he asked.

Rhondi nodded and began to cry harder. Her tears made him feel a little hollow and guilty about what he was doing to her and to her brother … but she was one of the people trying to kill him.

“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.”

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. But 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 temper 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.

Instead, Luke asked, “When you visited the Pool of Knowledge, who did you see sitting on the Throne of Balance?”

The yellow flash that briefly colored Jacen’s eyes betrayed his surprise. But his expression remained calm, becoming almost beatific. Ben realized this was a question Jacen wanted to answer, one that he had never expected to be asked.

Instead of replying, however, Jacen cocked a brow. “First, would you mind telling me who you saw?”

“Not at all,” Luke replied. “Allana, surrounded by a retinue of species from all across the galaxy. She looked quite happy.”

A smile of relief—or perhaps it was triumph—came to Jacen’s face. “Then it doesn’t matter who I saw,” he said. “But it wasn’t you … if, by chance, that’s what you were thinking.”

Their conversation was, of course, entirely lost on Ben. He had no more idea what the Throne of Balance was than he did the Pool of Knowledge. And to tell the truth, it all sounded like the kind of mind-boggling stuff that could lead a guy down a dark path before he realized he had stepped into a shadow.

But the relief in his father’s Force aura, Ben did understand—and he understood the gratitude, as well. And he was thankful to Jacen for those two things, even if nothing else.

Luke gave Jacen a wry smile, then inclined his head and said, “It wasn’t, but thanks.”

Had Ben not been so attuned to Luke’s Force aura, he would not have noticed that his father had just done something that he had believed his father never did. Luke Skywalker had lied.

Jacen returned Luke’s wry smile. “I didn’t think so.”

He closed his eyes and began to sink beneath the surface, and, suddenly, Ben realized he couldn’t let his cousin go like that—not if he wanted to keep the promise he had made to his mother.

“Jacen, wait,” he said.

Jacen opened his eyes and stopped sinking.

“I, uh, I just wanted you to know,” Ben said. “Jacen, I forgive you.”

Jacen returned to the surface so he could speak. “That’s good, Ben. It’s one burden you won’t have to carry through life. Go with the Force.”

“Thanks.” Ben was so surprised by the sincerity in Jacen’s voice that he almost didn’t know what to say. “You too, I guess.”

Jacen snorted in amusement. “Ben, I am with the Force.” He paused, as though waiting for Ben to say something else, then finally asked, “Isn’t there a question you wanted to ask me?”

“Well, yeah.” Ben glanced nervously toward the woman in the mist. While he wasn’t sure that his father would believe anything Jacen told them about the mysterious figure, the question seemed worth asking. “But I didn’t want it to seem like I was trying to buy an answer.”

Jacen shook his head. “Ben, didn’t I just tell you to be honest with me?” He turned toward the Mists of Forgetfulness. “I wish I could help you, but I have no idea who that is.”

Ben’s heart sank. He half suspected Jacen was lying to him, but he saw no use in entertaining such bitter feelings. Either he had forgiven Jacen or he hadn’t, and it would be better for him if he had. At least he thought that was what his mother had been telling him.

“No problem, Jacen,” Ben said. “Have a peaceful … whatever.”

“Damnation,” Jacen supplied. He turned toward the Mists of Forgetfulness, then added, “But Ben, if you really need to know who she is, the lake doesn’t stretch forever. Just keep walking—you have all the time in the universe.”

Ben scowled, certain now that Jacen was toying with him. “Thanks, Jacen.” He glanced toward his stubborn father. “That was bound to be a big help.”

Jacen gave him a cruel smirk. “Just choose and act, Ben.” He sank beneath the water again, his eyes turning a bright, burning white. “Choose and act.”

“Good advice,” Ben said. He watched until his cousin had sunk back beneath the water and closed his eyes again, then turned to his father. “Dad, I’ve just made a command decision. If Jacen tells us we have all the time in the universe—”

“We’re in trouble, I know.” Luke turned away from the mists, then waved Rhondi and their guides back toward the near end of the lake. “Let’s go home.”

“But what about the lady in the mists?” the Givin asked, moving to block their way. “You can’t leave before you know who she—”

“I know one thing.” Luke brought his hand up, planting his palm in the center of the Givin’s chest and using a Force-enhanced strike to send him flying out of their path. “It’s time to get back to the Shadow.”