Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 06_ Vortex - Denning Troy [102]
Their Force auras were trembling with fear, their faces mottled by blue blisters and weeping sores. Luke could see by the purple bags beneath their eyes that they were exhausted with worry, and it was clear by their unkempt hair and drooping shoulders that they were close to giving up hope. He held their gazes, then began a special breathing exercise designed to help him immerse himself in the White Current—two short inhalations followed by a single long exhalation.
Adepts of the White Current believed that the Current was separate from the Force, that followers of other Force-using traditions were drawing on some lesser form of mystic energy. Other traditions tended to view the White Current as no more than a different manifestation of the Force. To Luke, they were both right. The White Current was different from the Force—but only in the sense that any current was a different thing from the ocean in which it flowed. In their essential wholeness, they were each other.
After a few breaths, Luke began to sense the White Current flowing past him, a feathery brush that made him feel refreshed and strong. He opened himself to it just as he would have to the Force, and it began to ripple through him, to fill him with a sensation of warmth and contentment. He surrendered himself to the current, let himself become a part of its flow and the flow to become a part of him.
Now that Luke had joined with the White Current, he began to see things through it—not as they appeared, but as they truly were. He turned his attention across the hangar again, pouring feelings of reassurance and calm into the White Current and using it to look at the two crew members of the ZipDel transport.
Their blisters and sores quickly faded from sight, and their flesh tone returned to a more healthy-looking pinkish beige. But their postures remained slumped and their eyes clouded with despair, suggesting that while their illness was merely an illusion, it was one they themselves accepted as real. Causing such suffering was an unthinkable cruelty to devotees of the White Current—and one that told Luke all he needed to know about where Abeloth was hiding.
“You two stay on the Emiax.” Luke opened the hatch and started down the boarding ramp. “I’ll go find out where they’re hiding the Shadow.”
“In just your robe, Master Skywalker?” The concern in Vestara’s voice sounded genuine. “We have hazard suits aboard.”
Luke glanced back. “A hazard suit?” Sensing another chance to steer her toward a false conclusion regarding Jedi abilities, he flashed his most condescending smirk. “Why would anyone need a hazard suit when he has the Force?”
He descended the boarding ramp into the briny, fetid air of the hangar, then made his way through a cloud of still-swirling dust to the opposite side of the landing pad and ascended a brick staircase to the portmaster’s office. Inside he found only two Pydyrians, both covered in the same bluish blisters and weeping sores as the humans he had glimpsed earlier. Small and slender, with long faces and delicate, vaguely avian features, the two Pydyrians were perched on roosting stools, their back-folding knees tucked beneath their seats and their toe-talons locked tight around wooden crossbars. Both were tilted precariously forward, the communications officer over his comm equipment and the portmaster over his slant-topped desk, and both appeared sick and on the verge of collapse.
Luke studied them through the White Current, as he had with the ZipDel crew, and saw that their illness was an illusion. As much as he wanted to believe it was Abeloth deluding the inhabitants of Pydyr, he had his doubts. Dozens of Sith—including a couple of Masters and a powerful Lord—had spent weeks in Abeloth’s company without perceiving her true nature, and he himself had failed to see through