Vortex: Star Wars (Fate of the Jedi) (Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi)

by Troy Denning

  After a few moments watching the madness, Taalon seemed to gather his courage. He snapped his lightsaber off his belt and pointed it at the woman floating before him. “You will end this, now.”

  Abeloth merely smiled. “I could.” She drifted out of his reach and turned toward the large gathering hall where she had first appeared. “Or I could explain what’s happening to you.”

  Taalon’s expression changed from exhaustion to rapture. He glanced in the direction of his maddened followers, but Luke knew the choice he would make, even before the High Lord looked away again. Apparently, so did Abeloth, because she started toward the gathering hall without awaiting his reply.

  “The choice is yours,” she said. “But make it quickly. You don’t have much time.”

  That was all it took to send Taalon scurrying after her.

  Luke waited until the High Lord had moved out of earshot, then turned to Ben. “We need to secure the Shadow. Take Vestara and—”

  “Don’t even say it. The Shadow is locked up tighter than Daala’s smile.” Ben waved his lightsaber toward the gathering hall. “I’m not letting you go in there without me.”

  “And there’s no way you’re leaving me out here—with Ben or without him.” Vestara turned a hand toward her now unconscious father, and he rose off the ground and started to float toward them. “Look around, Master Skywalker. I think we’re safer with you and Lord Taalon.”

  Luke thought for a moment, then nodded. Given the madness in the village, if Ben and Vestara tried to board the Shadow now, they would find themselves fighting off crazed Sith. And even if they made it safely aboard and obeyed an order to leave the island, they would find themselves at the mercy of the three Kondo-class shuttles overhead. For days, he had been hoping the Jedi reinforcements would arrive in time to help. Now it was clear: He and Ben were on their own.

  “Okay,” he said. “But no heroics in there. I’m still trying to figure this thing out. I’ll tell you when I want you to do something.”

  Ben glanced over at Vestara, who nodded, and then he said, “Sure thing, Dad. Just don’t get yourself killed, and we’ll do fine.”

  They started after Abeloth and Taalon, stepping into a stream of dark side energy so thick it felt sticky. Luke recalled the miasma of fear and anguish he had sensed when they debarked the Shadow, and he knew Vestara had been right: it was raw power. He was feeling pure dark side energy, and it was being generated by the fear and suffering caused by the “plague” gripping Pydyr. And Abeloth was gathering that power to herself, no doubt calling on it to heal from the wounds she had received in the Maw.

  They entered the hall, a gloomy post-and-beam chamber with a vaulted ceiling, swirling in shadow and smoke. At the far end was a sunken stage, ringed by several tiers of recessed seating. Rising from the stage pit was a red glow, shimmering with a heat so ferocious that it brought sweat beads to Luke’s face even ten meters away. At the edge of the pit stood Abeloth and Taalon, Abeloth glaring across the room at Luke.

  “I don’t recall inviting you.”

  “I wanted to check on you, Akanah.” Luke signaled Ben and Vestara to wait by the door and started forward. He knew he wasn’t fooling Abeloth—that she would be aware of his suspicions regarding her true identity. But his only chance to get close enough to strike was to convince her that she was a step ahead of him—that she was manipulating him into position. “By the look of that pit, it’s a good thing I did.”

  “And what makes you think that is not how it should look?” Abeloth did not move away as Luke approached, and he saw that the stage floor had actually split. The interior of the crevice was too bright to peer into, but he had heard enough blurping magma in his time to recognize the sound rising from the fissure. “It’s not as if you have been here before, Luke Skywalker.”

  “We both know this isn’t how a Fallanassi meditation hall should look.” Luke knew he was talking to Abeloth, not Akanah. But how did she know he had never been here before? Had she stolen Akanah’s memories along with her appearance? Did she have them all? That would make her even more dangerous—and Luke even more vulnerable. “Tell me what’s going on here, Akanah. Fallanassi don’t use the Current to kill.”

  “Wialu did, at the Battle of N’zoth,” Abeloth reminded him. “And you are the one who asked her to do it. A pattern is emerging, don’t you think?”

  Luke shrugged, though inside him a cold lump of fear had started to form. Only a hundred people in the galaxy knew what had happened at the Battle of N’zoth, where he had persuaded the Fallanassi leader, Wialu, to help the New Republic win a desperate fight. And Abeloth wasn’t one of those hundred people.

  “I didn’t ask you to kill anyone this time,” Luke said, stopping beside her, on the side opposite Taalon.

  “No, but it is the Jedi who make it necessary. Because of your nephew, the Current has changed.” Out of the corner of her eye, Abeloth caught Taalon’s gaze—and held it. “Because of what Jacen Solo did, the Throne of Balance will be claimed by a usurper.”

  “A usurper?” Taalon asked.

  Luke uttered a silent curse. It was difficult to guess how much Abeloth knew about his visions of the throne—but however much that was, even mentioning it in Taalon’s presence posed a danger to Allana.

  When Abeloth did not respond to his question, Taalon asked another. “Are you speaking of the Jedi queen?”

  Abeloth pretended not to hear, returning her gaze to Luke. “Because of Jacen Solo, the Fallanassi must do whatever is necessary to restore the Current to the proper flow,” she said. “Wherever Jedi tread, Master Skywalker, mayhem follows. If the Fallanassi must set right your mistakes, the burden for our actions does not fall on us.”

  “Only the killer is a criminal, not his executioner,” Taalon agreed. “Tell me about this usurper.”

  Abeloth finally acknowledged his question, lifting one brow in his direction. “Is that a request, or an order?”

  “An offer,” Taalon said smoothly. “Name this Jedi queen, and you shall have whatever the Sith can offer.”

  “She’s toying with you. This queen and her Throne of Balance are just another illusion,” Luke said quickly. Abeloth’s effort to set them against each other was a good sign, suggesting she lacked the strength to battle them outright. Unfortunately, it was also a good tactic, as Luke could not permit any Sith to know Allana’s true identity and leave the hall alive. “Akanah told you herself that Abeloth was a Fallanassi. You can’t believe in her trickery.”

  Abeloth smirked at Luke, then turned back to Taalon. “You have bathed in the Pool of Knowledge,” she said to the Sith. “Trust what you see.”

  “Good advice, if you’re a master of illusions,” Luke said sarcastically. He looked past Abeloth to Taalon. “She’s trying to play us against each other. You do see that?”

  “Do you think a High Lord would be unaware of that, Master Skywalker?” Taalon kept his gaze fixed on Abeloth. “Whether it works will depend on what she is offering.”

  Abeloth circled around to Taalon’s far side, placing the High Lord between herself and Luke. “Sarasu Taalon, I will teach you what you are becoming.” She was purring these words into his ear, just loud enough for Luke to hear, even over the bubbling of the magma. “And when you understand that, you will not need me to learn the identity of the Jedi queen. You will know it.”

  Taalon fixed his gaze on Luke and said nothing, and a cold shudder raced up Luke’s spine. The High Lord had made his choice, leaving the Skywalkers outnumbered and outpowered against him and Abeloth. And there was no way to save Ben except win.

  Luke used the Force to touch Ben with a sense of danger, then put on an innocent act and began to peer into the corners of the hall.

  “All right, Abeloth. What did you do with Akanah?” Luke asked. He stepped away from the speaking pit on the pretext of going to look for her. “Did you trade bodies with her, like you did with Dyon Stadd?”

  But Taalon knew the true reason Luke was moving, and the
High Lord was not about to let himself be pinned against the pit. In the blink of an eye he had his lightsaber in hand and was moving to cut off his Jedi foe … which was exactly what Luke expected.

  Luke grabbed Taalon in the Force and sent him sailing toward the door in a high arc. The snap-hiss of an igniting lightsaber confirmed that Ben understood what Luke intended. By the time Luke had his own weapon in hand, his son was Force-leaping into combat, his blue blade tracing an arc that an exhausted and weakened Taalon would be hard-pressed to avoid.

  Thinking they might win this battle after all, Luke thumbed his own blade to life and spun to attack Abeloth—and that, of course, was when the crackle of Force lightning rang out from the door, where Vestara was standing. Ben cried out in surprise and anguish, then two distinct thuds sounded behind Luke, his son slamming into one wall and Taalon into another. A terrific pop echoed across the hall, and Taalon bellowed in pain.

  Luke was already on Abeloth, launching a vicious thrust kick. She took it like a durasteel wall, then her arm flew up to rake at his eyes. Luke was ready, and his blade burned through the limb as though it were nutripaste.

  “Luke!” The cry came in Akanah’s voice, the terror unmistakable. “Don’t! It’s me! Akanah!”

  Luke knew better than to believe her, even for a heartbeat. He continued his swing, sweeping the blade across at thigh level, and felt it slice into a leg. Abeloth shrieked in a dozen voices and spun away, falling toward the tiers of sunken seating. He used a Force nudge to send her arcing toward the cleft in the stage floor and lost sight of her against the glow of the magma.

  Desperate to know what had become of Ben, Luke reached out in the Force and felt the frightened, groggy presence of someone who had taken a head-shaking blow. He turned and found his son trapped against a wall, defending himself from Vestara’s fierce attack, an unrefined high-low-low-high pattern, which Ben was blocking only because of his strength in the Force and the reflexes drilled into him by thousands of hours of practice.

  Luke flicked a finger in Vestara’s direction and sent her tumbling toward Taalon, who was limping across the floor toward Ben, one knee buckling every time he placed weight on it. Had the High Lord been at his best, he would simply have redirected the girl straight into Luke. Weakened as he was by his injury and his ongoing transformation, he barely managed to Force-jump over her—and that left him vulnerable.

  Luke raised his lightsaber and grasped the Sith in the Force, intending to bring him tumbling into an ignited blade … then felt something catch him across the ankles. He had no time to be astonished, barely even the nanosecond required to realize Abeloth had survived her fall into the cleft. He merely felt his feet shoot away and found himself dropping face-first.

  Luke tucked his chin and managed to flip to his back before he hit the stone floor. Abeloth was on top of him, her flesh blistered and smoking, her remaining leg entwining both of his, her remaining arm wrapped around the back of his neck. She drove the still-sizzling stump of her amputated arm into his throat, catching him square in the voice box and pressing hard. The cartilage began to give. He pushed back with the Force, reinforcing his larynx and trying to throw her off.

  It was no good. Abeloth had a dozen times the Force strength Luke had, and he could do no more than keep her from crushing his throat. He tried to bring his knee up and found his legs incapable of moving. She straightened her leg, forcing his knee to bend against the joint, and something gave with a muted pop. He slammed a Force-enhanced knuckle strike into her side and heard three ribs snap … and remained entangled. She dug her nails into the root of his ear, then twisted, and his head erupted in pain. He slipped his deactivated lightsaber between their bodies and jammed the blade emitter against her stomach. He thumbed the activation slide and saw the blade shoot out the other side.

  Still Abeloth held on, clinging to him like a self-tightening cargo cable. It seemed impossible to shake her, and Luke knew that he had to. To fail was to die, and take Ben with him. He reached out with the Force, grabbing for anything that might help him, anything to give him a second or a centimeter to counterattack.

  Half a dozen loose cushions rose from the seating tiers and bounced harmlessly past. He continued to reach, felt something heavy and liquid rising from the stage floor, and a glob of molten heat arced onto them, splashing across Abeloth’s back and spattering off the floor, driving tiny pinpricks of anguish into Luke’s arm and face where it hit him.

  A hundred-voiced wail erupted from Abeloth’s mouth, shrill and loud and inhuman. Plumes of greasy smoke shot from her back, and the smell of charred flesh grew sickening in the air. The heat of the magma burned through Abeloth’s body to sear him, and he heard organs sizzling inside her chest. Any normal being would have been dead by now. But Abeloth seemed to live in the Force as much as she did in a physical body, and now she was using the Force to animate a body that should have been in its death throes.

  Finally, the pressure on Luke’s throat eased—not much, but enough to draw breath. It made him hope he might survive … at least fight a few moments more. He continued to reach with the Force, now going higher toward the ceiling vault, and caught hold of one of the long crossbeams that held the roof in place.

  Luke pulled, trying to open a little space so he could gain his feet and fight, and they both began to rise.

  Abeloth pulled in the opposite direction, and they dropped back to the floor. Luke opened himself more fully to the Force, using his love for Ben and his lost wife and the entire Jedi Order to draw it into him. The foul miasma of dark side energy, still swirling into Abeloth, seeped into him, filling him with greasy nausea. But the light side rushed in, flowing in from all sides, pouring through him like fire. A golden glow began to rise from his skin—cells literally bursting with the power of the Force—and Luke felt them both start upward again. Abeloth countered, hissing in anger, and they hovered a hand span above the floor.

  A tremendous crack echoed down from the vaulted ceiling. They dropped again, hitting so hard that Luke’s breath left in a groan. Abeloth slammed down atop him, her single leg still wrapped around his, the stump of her arm driving harder into his throat. Something crunched in his larynx. His breath came in shallow, wheezy gasps, and the crushing hand of panic began to clench at his heart.

  Then a two-meter length of beam came plummeting out of the darkness and caught Abeloth across the back. The impact compressed his chest until he thought it would split. Then her leg went slack, her stump slipped from Luke’s throat, and she fell motionless, her face pressed against his, cheek-to-cheek.

  Luke planted his feet flat on the floor and bridged, trying to throw her off. The effort rolled waves of agony up his rib cage, and Abeloth’s leg and hips slid to one side, limp and loose. But the rest of her remained on top of him, pinned in place by the heavy beam. Guessing that her spine had been crushed, he pressed his lightsaber’s blade emitter against her flank. Akanah’s voice sounded in his ear.

  “Luke, forgive me,” she whispered. “I didn’t … I didn’t understand.”

  A shudder raced through her body, then her head rose, and in the depths of her eyes shone a pair of tiny silver specks. Her hair assumed a golden cast and tented around Luke’s face, forming a private world where there was only them, and her lips broadened into a full-lipped mouth so large it stretched ear-to-ear.

  The mouth opened, revealing a row of slender fangs, and started to descend toward his throat. Luke thumbed his lightsaber switch and dragged the hissing blade up the length of her body. She gave a long gasp of anguish, then the silver light faded from her eyes, and her head cracked down on the stone next to his.

  A pang of sorrow shot through Luke. Abeloth had taken over Akanah’s body, but Akanah had fought through with those final words to ease his conscience. He knew that he still didn’t fully understand Abeloth’s power, but he was too frightened for his son to spend time thinking about it now. Ben was still locked in battle against Taalon and Vestara, and judging by the fear radiatin
g from his son’s Force aura, the fight was going badly. Luke used the Force to push aside the heavy beam, then tried to spring up … and nearly collapsed as his injuries blossomed into crippling pain. The act of breathing was like choking on a rock, his knee felt catchy and swollen, and there was a crushing in his chest that made him wonder if the beam had smashed his sternum.

  He found Ben near the door of the hall, somersaulting through the smoky air, his blade tracing a sapphire helix as he tumbled away from Taalon toward Vestara. Vestara, for her part, was crouched to spring, dancing back and forth as she looked for a chance to dart past and rejoin the High Lord. Knowing that he would not last through a prolonged, strenuous battle, Luke used the Force to grab the beam and send it spinning toward Taalon.

  It appeared the attack would take the Sith entirely unawares—until he suddenly pivoted, bringing his lightsaber up to cleave the beam in half. One end tumbled past harmlessly.

  The other slammed Taalon between the shoulder blades. Rather than absorb the full impact, the High Lord let it launch him into a diving roll. Luke swept his hand in the Sith’s direction, using the Force to accelerate the tumble and send him crashing into the far wall.

  Hoping to leap in and finish his enemy, Luke gathered his legs to spring. His knee caved, nearly sending him to the floor. Rather than damage the joint any further—and arrive unable to stand—he lurched after Taalon, calling on the Force to stabilize the injury.

  As he staggered forward, Luke glanced over to check on Ben—then found himself gritting his teeth in frustration. His son had slipped into an attack pattern more suitable for disarming than killing. Clearly, he was more confident of Luke’s victory than he should have been—or still too enamored of Vestara to see how dangerous it was to show her mercy.

  Before he could shout an order to take her down, a new arrival stepped into the hall. At first, Luke could see little more than a figure silhouetted in the doorway. With Abeloth destroyed, he feared the Sith were coming to their senses and rushing to Taalon’s aid.