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She pulled back, and a glowing golden mist clung to her lips. The mist grew, mercifully obscuring her face as she extracted—

A deep, agonized groan was ripped from Dyon, hauled from his innermost soul, floating on that golden mist. Every limb, every centimeter, every cell of him was coming under attack. It was not like the searing, focused pain in his temple; this pain was aching and deep. The pain at his temple changed from white-hot to icy cold, and it began to enter him. As Abeloth pulled forth something—

Life energy, she’s taking my life essence …

—from his body, she gave in return a dreadful cold. A slithering, dark cold that wrapped around his throat, closing it, then his heart, then his entrails, then seeped implacably into the rest of him.

He could feel himself withering up, the desiccation turning him into a living corpse, dried and husklike, as if he had been buried in the sand for centuries.

Abeloth chuckled, a throaty, warm sound. “You have served me well, better than any have in a long time. Soon, we will become one, Dyon Stad. Soon, you will never leave me. And you will have enabled me to continue.”

“THE CAVE,” SAID VESTARA, PEERING AT THE TRACKING DEVICE. SWEAT beaded her face, and tendrils of dark hair clung clammily to her cheeks and neck. They were all baking in the blue sunlight. Under other circumstances, Luke suspected that the Sith would waste the Force by creating cool breezes and lowering their body temperature. But not now, not here. There was no place for trivialities here. There were twenty of them who had fought their way through the voracious plant life lurking on the shores and in the red river itself.

Twenty of them left, anyway. The yellow water plants and the funnel-shaped trees claimed two Sith before they were finally beaten back. Blasted with Force energy, sliced by lightsabers of three different hues, and cut by glass parangs, the damaged foliage hung back almost sullenly as the group stood at the base of the cliff.

“It seems too obvious,” Taalon said. He frowned as he regarded the small dark shape about a kilometer up the shoulder of the volcanic mountain. “Even if Abeloth is unaware that we placed a tracking device on Dyon, which I doubt, she knows that this is the place Vestara first encountered her. Why would she wait here to be attacked?”

“It could be more of a stronghold than Vestara realized,” Luke said. His voice was doubtful. “This could be her ultimate seat of power, somehow.” To Luke, this whole place reeked of the dark side. It was strong where the cave was, to be sure, but there were other places on this world where dark-side energy gathered just as strongly—even more so. “Or there could be a nice little trap waiting for us, which seems more likely.”

“A trap is only a trap if it takes one by surprise,” Gavar Khai said. “Otherwise, it is merely an obstacle to be overcome.”

“On that, at least, we are agreed. Let’s find out which.”

They moved quickly despite the heat up the trail to the entrance to the cave, weapons in hand, senses alert.

It was no trap. It was no attack. Abeloth was not here, but her cat’s-paw was.

Dyon lay on the floor of the cave, his face and arms pale and visible even in the dim lighting. A quick check, both with conventional tools and in the Force, revealed that he was alone, and Ben raced up to him.

“He’s still alive,” Ben said, “But only just.”

Dyon opened his eyes. Luke expected him to struggle, but instead he reached out and clasped Ben’s shoulder.

“Ben … so sorry …”

Ben and Luke exchanged glances. “You know me? You don’t think I’m an imposter?”

“She—she’s not what she seems,” Dyon gasped. “She tricked me. You still seem—seem wrong to me but I know that’s her influence. She tried to kill me. She sensed you coming and left me for dead.”

“Let her fear us,” Taalon said. “Hundreds of Sith, powerful in the Force, come to take her down. She should know fear.”

“I believe that she left, but not because she was afraid,” Luke said. He and Ben helped Dyon to his feet. Color was starting to return to his face.