Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 02_ Dark Apprentice - Kevin J. Anderson [79]
Kyp swallowed hard at seeing the image of Exar Kun.
“Who do you think he was?” Dorsk 81 asked, squinting to stare across the water.
Kyp answered in a quiet, husky voice. “Someone very powerful.”
The great orange sphere of Yavin lurked on the horizon with only a fuzzy curve peeping over the tops of the jungle. The system’s small sun would also be setting soon. The twin lights in the sky cast intersecting glitter paths across the still lake.
Kyp gestured toward the temple. “We can spend the night there if you’d like,” he said.
Dorsk 81 nodded with more eagerness than Kyp had expected. “I would like to sleep inside shelter again,” he said, “rather than up in a tree tangled in vines. But how are we going to get out there? How deep is the lake?”
Kyp went to the edge. The water was as transparent as diamond and so deep that it reflected the bottom like a lens, making it impossible to determine how far down the water went. Just below the surface he saw columns of rock rising from the bottom like submerged stepping stones that stopped just barely beneath the water.
Kyp stepped out onto one. The clear water rippled around the bottom of his shoe, but he did not sink in. He took another step to the second stone.
Dorsk 81 stared at him; Kyp knew that he must appear to be walking directly across the surface of the water. “Are you using the Force?” Dorsk 81 said.
Kyp laughed. “No, I’m using stepping stones.”
Without hesitation he splashed to the next stone and then the next, eager to reach the temple—a source of new knowledge and secret techniques. On the island he stepped onto mounds of pitted volcanic rock splotched with orange and green lichen that looked like droplets of alien blood. He could already feel the power.
Kyp turned to watch his companion pick his way across the lake. It looked very much as if Dorsk 81 balanced on the fragile membrane of the pool’s surface. The illusion was very effective. Around him silence blanketed the island, as if none of the jungle creatures or insects dared to come near the empty temple.
“It’s cold here,” Dorsk 81 said, shaking water off his feet and looking around. The smooth-skinned alien hunched his head closer to his shoulders.
“You were complaining before about how hot it was,” Kyp said. “You should be grateful.”
Dorsk 81 clamped his lipless mouth shut and nodded once, but said nothing else.
Kyp walked around, looking at the polished black glass angles of the pyramid, the jutting point at the top. The architecture had been designed as an angular funnel to concentrate the Force, assembled to enhance the powers of Sith rituals.
He stared up at the frozen statue of Exar Kun. The brooding dark lord looked so real to him, so awe inspiring, that Kyp expected the sculpture to bend down and grasp him.
Kyp knew now that the Great Temple was the focal point for the entire Massassi civilization that Exar Kun had built up from primitive decay. The Great Temple had been the headquarters, the prime focus of Kun’s battles in the Sith War. But this small, isolated temple had been more of a private retreat, the place where Exar Kun had concentrated on improving his own abilities, strengthening himself.
A cool wind breathed out of the wedge-shaped opening as if the silent temple were some kind of sleeping monster. “Let’s go inside,” Kyp said.
He ducked his head and took one step into the enfolding darkness. But when he blinked his eyes, the light gradually grew inside the chamber as if lightning bolts trapped within the black slabs of glass continued to send faint sparks visible only from the corner of his eye. When Kyp faced the polished dark walls, he saw nothing in them, only faint etched markings of hieroglyphics in a long-forgotten language. He could not read any of the words.
Deep green tendrils of moss grew like frozen biological flames that worked their way up the polished stones. Against one wall stood a smooth rounded