Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (27 page)

Alchemy should have no part in a Je’daii’s experience. It is a dark force, arcane
and dangerous. It has the power to upset balance. There are other ways
.

—Temple Master Vor’Dana, 10,456 TYA

At Anil Kesh Lanoree finds herself, without even realizing that she was lost.

Their first few days there are strange. There is an orientation process to go through
because of the disruptive influence of the Chasm below the temple, and Lanoree becomes
immersed in the talks, meditations, and instruction. She and several other Journeyers
spend their time in darkened, windowless rooms away from any sight of the Chasm, and
a Sith Master guides them through varying stages of sickness and uncertainty. The
Sith is a wise old man, and he has done this many times before. He sees their discomfort
fade—not lessening, because the Chasm will always affect anyone strong in the Force,
but simply tempered.

And in his wisdom, he perceives that Dal is enjoying all this.

Lanoree’s brother says very little over those first few days at the temple, but he
exudes a sense of peace that she has not seen in him before. He enjoys witnessing
his sister and the other Journeyers suffering.

They are given several tours of the Anil Kesh Temple, which is even larger and more
incredible than Lanoree thought. Each of its three giant support legs houses a complex
honeycomb of living quarters, the structures designed to afford as much strength as
possible to the supports. Within the legs are dampeners the size of Cloud Chasers,
designed to absorb the incredible pressures placed on the temple by frequent and violent
storms originating in the Chasm. Huge tanks of pneumatic fluid are stored at regular
intervals, and there are also several access ports in each leg for escape craft. None
has ever been used, and their tour guide assures them that none are needed. Everything
here is large and amazing, the architectural and engineering talent on display awe-inspiring.
Their guide seems to take some satisfaction in this.

The massive central body of the temple is supported by these legs, hanging directly
above the Chasm. And floating around the temple itself, the Tho Yor. Hanging by means
unknown, it drifts around Anil Kesh, so it is believed, in tune with the Force.

This central area is the heart of Anil Kesh. There are several large laboratories
here, along with teaching rooms, private studies for Temple Masters, libraries, holo
suites, and meditation chambers. There are also launch bays from which drones and
other equipment are sometimes dropped into the Chasm. Lanoree is surprised to learn
how infrequently this now happens. Every experiment that could safely be carried out
on the Chasm has already been performed countless times, and still so little is known
about the bottomless gorge.

Future discoveries, they are told, must arise from more esoteric means.

Yet a blazing, pulsing beam of energy is still fired down into the Chasm from the
very heart of Anil Kesh, seeking information and readings.

On the fourth day, the Sith Master frees them from his instruction
and tells them that their new Masters will be introducing themselves that evening.
The rest of the day is their own.

“I’m going to look at it,” Lanoree tells Dal. “I’m going outside to see.” She means
the Chasm. Even uttering those words causes a flutter of trepidation and excitement
in her stomach. She is about to confront something that is still a mystery to even
the greatest Je’daii, and she wants to do so with her brother.

But it’s too late.

“It’s nothing, really,” he says matter-of-factly. “Deep. Stormy. I’ve been out there
four times a day since we’ve been here. I’m more interested in the temple than the
Chasm, though. Have you
seen
how long the temple legs are? Have you
felt
how much it flexes in the wind?”

He is toying with her, and he knows that she knows. But he doesn’t care. His vision
is elsewhere now, always, and soon something is going to happen. Maybe one day she’ll
wake up, Dal will be gone, and she’ll never see him again. Or perhaps it will be worse
than that.

“I’m going to look at it,” she says again, and as she pushes past Dal she feels rather
than sees his silent chuckle.

There are steps that lead up onto a gangway and outside. The heavy metal doors are
always kept locked on the inside, as though something from beyond might wish to gain
entry. But the dangers are far less physical. She spins the locking handle on a door,
and it swings inward.

The blast of air is shocking. Loaded with warm raindrops, gushing against her like
the breath of an unimaginable monster, it carries the smell of something mysterious
and deep. Rain patters across the floor and spreads inside, and Lanoree feels a moment
of panic—what has she let in?

She makes a quick decision and steps outside, pulling the door closed behind her.

Above her arcs one of the three great curving arms of the temple. They act both as
counterbalances to the legs and also as transmitters and receivers, gathering atmospheric
charge to fuel Anil Kesh’s experiments and sending out messages from the Temple Masters
to other Je’daii across Tython and beyond. Its mass shelters her somewhat from the
storms.

But she can still look down.

She walks to the edge of the wide viewing platform and grips the
railing. She feels the weight of Anil Kesh behind her, and the protective arms seem
to hold her within their shadowy grasp. The temple feels on the breath of the Chasm,
and its sturdy legs absorb every subtle impact of the wind. “ ‘You always move, seeking
to draw my eyes,’ ” she says. It is a line from a love poem she once read in an old
paper book of her mother’s, and she wonders whether the poet had ever visited this
place.

Looking down, she wonders whether all Je’daii are in love with the Chasm.

It is mystery. It is depth and infinity on the surface of this world they deign to
call their home. Its breath is warm and loaded, and deeper down through the mist of
torrential rain, she can see the frequent flash of Force lightning, erupting in the
darkness and illuminating nothing. It is dizzying and thrilling, terrifying and wonderful.
She grips the railing so hard that her fingers hurt and her knuckles turn white, not
sure she can ever let go.

There is a brief, ecstatic moment when she is tempted to lift herself over the railing
and fall. It will end in death, but she will also get to see the Chasm’s depth, to
know its secrets.

It cannot be bottomless. They only say that because no Je’daii has reached its bottom
and lived
.

“Or none have gone down there and returned,” she whispers, the words immediately stolen
by the wind. She is drenched through by the rain. The storm whips curtains of water
back and forth across the Chasm below her.

She feels a hand on her shoulder, and instantly fears it is Dal come to do her harm.
I am the Chasm
, he said, perhaps meaning that he is a mystery to her now, with a mind that no Je’daii
will ever be able to fully understand.

Lanoree freezes. She cannot fight back because she is too shocked and too overcome
with a sense of infinity.

But then a warm voice says, “Come inside, Lanoree, where we can begin our talk.”

That first meeting with Master Dam-Powl extends long into the night.

“I told you to never get in my way.”

Darkness. Pain. She heard her own ragged breathing, felt the troubled beating of her
heart. Her head throbbed and pulsed, the core of a raging sun in the center of her
brain. And she knew that voice.

“I never thought they’d send you after me.”

She opened her eyes, but the brightness hurt. She closed them. The pain was a weight
crushing every part of her. Her scalp was wet and warm, and everything was red.

Normally a calm sea, the Force within her was now a raging river of confused currents.

“I thought they’d have more sense.”

Dal
, she thought, and tried to sit up. Someone helped. That surprised her, but she was
already gathering her senses.
Stay like this. Be weak. Be wounded
.

“I knew you were onto me on Kalimahr—”

“How?” Her voice echoed and thumped in her head, pounding her skull, but she could
not help asking the question.

Dal did not answer. “Didn’t think you’d be able to follow. Thought I’d shaken you.
But you’re
persistent
.”

Was that something conflicted in his voice when he talked about her? Lanoree could
not tell. He had changed so much, and she knew that without even seeing him.

In the distance, a deep rumble.
What was that? Where is Tre?
She remembered his scream, guessed he was dead, and felt a surprising sadness. Tre
was not a good Twi’lek, but he was trying to make himself better. Trying to make up
for his past.

Lanoree opened her eyes again and looked at her brother. He was blurry to begin with,
swaying in her vision like a scar serpent waiting to strike. She closed one eye and
her sight settled. Dal manifested, down on one knee before her as if questioning one
of the elder gods.

“You’ve grown up,” Lanoree whispered. Dal laughed. She recognized the sound, but there
was something grating in it, something mad.

And he
had
grown up. Gone were his boyish good looks, replaced by a weathered countenance that
carried every day of every year that had passed. He’d lost some of his hair, and what
remained was speckled gray. There was a scar on his left cheek. He could have done
something
about the hair and scar, but she saw no vanity in him at all, no evidence of self-awareness
about his appearance. His robe was plain and rough. Everything that Dal was now resided
in his mad, glittering eyes.

Another thud! She felt it through her behind rather than heard it. Dal glanced up
at the ceiling.

“I’ve grown in every way,” he said. “See. Feel.”

“I don’t want to—”

“But I’m telling you to!” he screamed. Lanoree winced as his voice seared into her
head, driving spikes of pain into her eyeballs. Perhaps she’d fractured her skull.
She tried to feel, to sense, as they’d taught her in Mahara Kesh when she finished
her Great Journey without her brother. But she was confused. The Force flowed through
her, but it seemed to stutter. She could not examine herself, so instead she delved
toward Dal’s mind.

And withdrew just as quickly.

He grinned, nodding slowly. “You see?” he asked. “You feel?”

Lanoree nodded, tides of pain washing through her. She sensed nothing at all of the
Force within him. No light, no dark; no Ashla, no Bogan. But he bore an incredible
strength that she had only just started to recognize nine years before. It had grown
into something solid. She could only call it madness, and yet …

And yet Dal’s aims and ambitions were defined, and his route to achieving them firmly
set. His madness had method.

“Not many people are completely without your Force, eh, Lanoree? Not many. Not him.”
He nodded toward a corner and Lanoree looked, relieved to see Tre propped there. He
bled from a wound across his forehead and left eye, and twitched in unconsciousness.
“Not even most of my Stargazers.” There were three other people around the room, now,
other than the Selkath technicians. They were of differing species but all dressed
similar to Dal. Their look resembled that of a religious order, but they were much
more than that. And few religions went that heavily armed.

“Not many people want to be,” Lanoree said.

“See, that’s why you didn’t find me,” Dal said. “Down there in that old dark place.
Because you were looking the wrong way. You were searching as if I’d lost something
and fled, not found something and
set off on my own path. You were looking for a wounded, dying animal. Not the man
I’ve become.”

“I was looking for my brother.”

“And I’ve already told you, you left the brother you always wanted back in Bodhi with
our parents. He’s dead, now. Long dead.”

There was another distant impact, and Lanoree absorbed it, examined it. She was more
conscious and aware now. She thought it was an explosion.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

Dal stood and approached the covered object on the table. It was the size of a Noghri’s
head, and beneath the sheet it appeared completely spherical. “It’s almost finished,”
he said. “Almost ready. You know what this is?”

“Yes,” Lanoree said, bluffing. She knew his aims, and what he planned to use to make
them real. But really she had no idea what the device was.

Dal rested his hand on the object almost reverentially. “Everything I always wanted.”
He whispered it almost to himself.

“Dal—”

“Shut up.” He didn’t even look at her as he spoke, and a sudden change came over him.
“You’re sure?” he asked the group huddled in the corner. “You’re
certain
?”

“Yes,” one of the technicians said. He took one step forward. “Your request was … forgive
me, vague. We’ve worked hard. It was a task we relished. And the device is ready to
do everything you want of it. It’s … perfect. One of the finest of our creations,
and it pushes at the edge of all our accumulated science. Once it’s charged—”