Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 06_ Vortex - Denning Troy [54]
Taalon turned to Ship. “Is Abeloth still alive?” he asked. “Share your answer with the others, so the Jedi will know I am being honest.”
Luke’s spine bristled with the chill of a dark side touch, and then Ship spoke.
The dead do not move themselves. Its voice was wispy and low, audible only within the mind. If the Skywalkers did not hide her, then she must be alive.
Taalon frowned. “That’s no answer.”
It is the only answer I have, Ship responded. She released me when I was wounded. What became of her later, you know better than I.
Luke stepped to Taalon’s side. “Let’s assume that she is still alive.”
“Yes, let’s,” Taalon agreed. He kept his gaze focused on Ship. “Where would we look for her?”
A glimmer appeared in the viewport—not inside Ship, but in the viewport material itself—and Luke had the feeling that Ship’s attention had shifted to him.
You know where to find the answer.
Luke felt a dark tentacle of longing taking form inside him, slithering higher and starting to grow, and he knew that Ben had been right. Abeloth had survived—and Ship remained under her sway.
You have been there before.
Unsure whether Ship was speaking to him alone, or to Taalon and everyone else, Luke did not reply. Instead he pointed his son around behind Ship. Khai motioned Vestara up the bank to join him, then came to stand next to Luke, leaving him flanked on both sides by Sith.
After a moment’s silence, Taalon finally looked over at Luke. “What did it say?”
Knowing Taalon would sense a lie, Luke merely shrugged and shook his head. “Nothing we can trust,” he said. “Ben’s right. Ship is spying for Abeloth.”
Jedi liar! The gleam faded from Ship’s viewport as it shifted its attention away from Luke. He is only trying to hide it from you.
Taalon shot Luke a sidelong glance, then asked, “Hide what?”
Luke sighed and, knowing that Ship would say the name if he did not, answered, “The Pool of Knowledge.”
The planet’s greatest treasure. A slit opened in Ship’s flank, and it extruded a long boarding ramp. Come aboard, all of you. I’ll take you there.
TOO LARGE TO DESCEND INTO THE JUNGLE GORGE, SHIP WAS HOVERING just above the narrow cleft, the far end of its boarding ramp resting on a patch of rocky rim. Beyond this outcropping, a vine-tangled slope climbed steeply to the right, ascending through several kilometers of tree ferns and club mosses to the fume-belching crater atop the volcano’s summit. To the left, the slope fell away just as sharply, descending a thousand meters to the base of the mountain, where a vast swamp lay quivering with the volcano’s pent fury.
In the bottom of the gorge lay the only hint of the pool they had come to find, a tiny yellow-brown rivulet so filled with mud and sulfur that Ben could not imagine it coming from anything called the Pool of Knowledge.
Vestara stepped into the hatchway next to Ben. “So where’s this Pool of Knowledge?” she asked. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know about the pool, but we’re on the same side of the ridge as the fountain ruins.” Ben stepped out onto the ramp and pointed toward the jagged summit. “The notches in the crater look like they’re in pretty much the same place.” He turned and waved a hand toward the swamp at the foot of the mountain. “And the only swamp I’ve seen is near the fountain, too.”
Vestara followed him onto the ramp and examined the terrain, then glanced over with a half smile. “Show-off.”
“It would be more impressive if young Skywalker could tell us where to find this Pool of Knowledge,” Taalon said. He stepped into the hatchway behind them and peered in both directions. “I’m beginning to fear the Jedi are right about Ship being a spy. This is terrain for waterfalls, not pools.”
The pool is here, Ship insisted. The elder Skywalker has seen it.
Taalon’s suspicion filled the Force, and he turned to look back into Ship’s interior. “You have been here before?”
“I’ve been to the pool,” Luke corrected.