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“Besides,” Vestara offered, “if the Lost Tribe is there, they may live in the city, but they will definitely have visited the temple first. The nexus would call to them, just as the Fountain of Knowledge called to Taalon. There would be indications that someone had been there recently.”

Ben gave her a grateful smile. What his father had revealed about Dromund Kaas’s history had shaken him. He, like everyone else, had believed that it was nothing more than a myth. And the parallels Luke had drawn were uncomfortable. But he had faith in Vestara. Faith that wasn’t just built on hope, but on what he had seen from her. How she had grown. On what he felt from her, not for her. And she’d gotten in a good riposte with her comment about his mother’s having saved Kyle Katarn.

Even so, he knew that Vestara was the one most at risk. Luke, as he had said, had been to the dark side and returned. He, Ben, had danced perilously close to that edge—close enough to take a good look and turn his back on it. Jaina, too, had had her life irrevocably altered by it. But Vestara—he knew that in many ways, for her it would feel like coming home.

But so had Korriban, and they had all seen how she behaved there.

The noisome smell of fetid water and decay was borne to them on the still, warm breeze as they walked down the ramp, boots squelching in the muck. Ben thought that if the dark side had a smell, it would be this reek—almost sweet in the way that rot could be, stifling, and impossible to avoid. Dark-side energy, as Luke had warned, was extremely strong here, as strong in its own way as it had felt on Korriban. There it had been intense and almost arrogant, power-hungry. Here those dark energies felt more insidious, more purely evil for evil’s sake than fuel for a lust for power. Despite the warmth, the moist air felt clammy, like wet skin slapping against his own. Nausea, both physical and spiritual, rippled through him.

Their destination lay straight ahead. Home to the Dark Prophets, site of an extremely powerful Dark Force nexus, the Sith temple loomed upward, a black, somber silhouette against the gray daylight sky, rendered mysterious and unclear by the mist that occasionally thickened to drizzle. No lights punctured its cold darkness.

“Uncle Luke, you take us to the nicest places,” Jaina said.

“I’ll take you and Jag out to dinner at the Indigo Tower when we get back,” Luke replied. “You weren’t able to actually eat the last time you were there, if I recall correctly.”

“Please—don’t talk about eating,” Ben said. “My stomach’s already reconsidering lunch.”

Vestara alone appeared to be unaffected by the stench. She smirked a little and said, “You can block it with the Force.”

Ben was about to chide Vestara on her too-casual use of the Force when he realized he’d done the same thing more than once on this strange odyssey on which he and his father had embarked. His stomach heaved again, and he took her advice. Sometimes “casual usage of the Force” was more a necessity than a whim. He’d do none of them any good if he got sick.

Luke stood for a moment, his eyes and other senses searching the landscape. “Anyone sense anything?”

Ben extended himself in the Force, both opening himself to the vile sensation of the dark side and utilizing his senses—even smell, temporarily at least—to gather what information he could.

“Other than the obvious, which is a metric ton of dark-side energy, I can’t sense anything,” Jaina said.

Vestara, too, shook her head. “I can’t feel the presence of anyone familiar here.”

Luke’s gaze fell on Ben. “Nope,” Ben replied.

“All right. Be aware that this world hosts ysalamiri. It’s possible if the Sith are here, they’ve figured that out and will be making use of them to hide themselves.”

“It’s also possible we might fall flat on our faces if we Force-leap near a tree,” Ben said.

“That too,” Luke agreed, “which is even more likely. Let’s go.” The four of them Force-leapt from dry spot to dry spot, mindful of trees cradling ysalamiri and their Force-blocking bubbles,