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As the Sith Mara’s Force attack swept him away from her, Ben switched his lightsaber off. Whirling within the power of her attack, instead of fighting against it, he added some Force energy of his own—shoving him laterally across the direction of her attack, and suddenly he was being swept at almost right angles to the direction she’d sent him. For half the duration of each spin he was making, he could see her, illuminated by her lightsaber, and now she was looking in the wrong direction; his maneuver had worked.

He slammed into a wall of stone, managed to keep from grunting in pain. He rebounded off the surface and began to drop toward the floor below; he calculated it as only ten meters down, an easy drop in this gravity. When he hit the ground, he did so with a silence that would probably please his real mother.

In the distance, the Sith Mara stood ready, her head turning this way and that, seeking for him with her Force-senses as well as with her eyes. Ben tried to blank out his mind, to erase his thoughts, to give her nothing to look for. And he wasn’t using the Force; that would help.

But he was the only person within hundreds of meters of the Sith Mara. That should make it child’s play to find him…yet somehow it didn’t, and she kept looking.

Ben made one long lateral bound, circling the Sith Mara’s position. In that time, Sith Mara stopped moving; she stood stock-still, her lightsaber down at an angle suited to bringing it up in a blow or an umbrella-style defensive posture, and Ben suspected that her eyes were closed.

Silently, he launched himself forward. He brought his unlit lightsaber back at a ready-to-strike angle and kept his thumb on the power stud.

His jump was accurate; he didn’t need to correct it with little Force adjustments. He flew directly toward her, closing the gap between them as fast as a thrown zoneball.

Then he was near enough to see her face, her features. She was at rest, her eyes closed.

At peace. This wasn’t his mother, but it was his mother’s face, and there was no evil in it, no Sith malevolence.

He couldn’t thumb on his lightsaber and kill her. He just couldn’t.

She turned toward him and her eyes opened, red-glowing as before. She continued her turn into a spin. A chill of fear cut through his middle and he knew that her lightsaber blade would follow where the chill had been.

But it was her foot that came up, snapping into his gut with the power of a combat droid’s pistoning arm.

In slow motion, he felt the wind leaving his lungs, felt himself folding over her foot, felt his internal organs compress and bruise. Then he was flying away, blackness washing across his eyes where the image of his mother had been.

chapter thirty-two

Jacen seized a rock outcropping and held it, keeping him from dropping once more toward the man with the face of Luke Skywalker. “You’re just about as good as my true Master,” Jacen said. And it was true—the phantom he fought had the speed and moves of a Jedi Master. He’d be a fair match for Luke.

The bearded man gave him a mocking look. “And who is that?”

“You know,” Jacen said. “By the way, you look good with a beard.”

“You think so?” His opponent stroked his facial hair. “Well, I’m not sure what our disagreement is, but perhaps it could be settled by talking.”

Jacen considered that. This combat was not just pointless, being carried out at someone else’s wish for someone else’s ends, but also dangerous—the false Luke was potentially good enough to kill Jacen.

Still, the false Luke reeked of the dark side of the Force. There could be no enduring benefit in cooperating with him. Could there? For a moment Jacen was confused, weighing the preponderance of Jedi history and claims about dark-siders against his own limited experience.

But he decided in favor of history and tradition. “I try not to negotiate with phantoms, with things that don’t exist. Better to just cut them in half and watch them disappear.” Jacen kicked off from the wall and flew forward again.

He knew that this solidly planted, gravitationally advantaged Luke