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She said, “Choose, and act.”

He looked at the flare of battle above. He ached to go, burned to go, to find in himself the pure release, the cosmic symphony that he could feel echoing through Ganner … but—

He looked back at Vergere. “Every time you say that to me, it’s a trick.”

“As it is now,” she admitted. “But it’s not the same trick. The first time, you were but a boy. You did not truly understand what you were throwing away. The second time you were lost in the dark, and you needed flint and steel to spark a torch. Now, though—now, what are you, Jacen Solo?”

In an instant, it all flashed through him, from Sernpidal and Belkadan through Duro and Myrkyr to the Embrace of Pain, the Nursery, the Jedi Temple, and the cavern beast—

He was no warrior, he was certain of that. Not like Jaina was, or Anakin had been. He was no hero like Uncle Luke or his father, no great statesman like his mother or strategist like Admiral Ackbar or scientist like Danni Quee …

He remembered that he didn’t have to know what he was. All he had to do was decide.

“I—I guess …” he said slowly, frowning down at the weapon in his hand. “I guess—I’m a student.”

“Perhaps you are.” Vergere nodded. “Then you are also a teacher, for the two are one. But to be such, you must learn, and you must teach. You must live.”

She was right. He knew she was right. He could feel it as surely as he’d ever felt anything. But Ganner—

As he looked up, a new sun was born in the Well of the World Brain, somewhere deep in the tunnel above, a rising yellow glare that grew bright, and white, that flared until Jacen had to shield his eyes with his hand and turn away.

The Well shook, and he could feel sudden terror from the World Brain as the cantilevered bridgeway and platform collapsed, plunging a hundred meters to crash into the slime pool, and the world seemed to rock and tremble, and a blast of smoke and dust burst from the tunnel—

“What—” Jacen gasped, coughing in the dust that smelled of burning blood and duracrete, “—what—? Is that Ganner? What’s happening up there?”

“It may be Ganner. It may be a weapon of the Yuuzhan Vong. It makes no difference. Your choice is the same: stay, or go.”

The glare from above died in a long groundquake rumble and new billows of dust, and when Jacen reached out once more through the Force, Ganner was no longer there.

In the hollow of his chest, the warriors who had fought him were similarly absent.

Jacen stared up at the mouth of the tunnel. He could see it now, choked with rubble. Then the platforms around it began to sag, to crumble, and slide down the bowl toward the slime pool. Even the gloom-shrouded ceiling high above seemed to droop, and he felt a warm hand on his shoulder, and heard a warm whisper in his ear: Go.

It sounded like Ganner.

He frowned at Vergere. She returned his gaze blankly.

He would never know what had happened up there.

He would never know if that voice he’d just heard had been Ganner’s, or another of Vergere’s tricks.

He would never really know—could never really know—much of anything. Truth is elusive, and questions are more useful than answers.

But he knew this: life is more a matter of choosing than of knowing. He could never know the eventual destination of his path, but he could always choose in which direction to take each step.

He chose.

“You’re the one who’s supposed to be my guide through the lands of the dead, right?” he said. “So go ahead and guide. Show me the way out of here.”

She smiled down upon him fondly.

“Of course,” she said. “I was only waiting for you to ask.”

EPILOGUE

LESSONS

Jacen reclined on a couch beast in the coralcraft’s cargo stomach, staring through the clear curve of a corneal port at the vast noncolor of hyperspace. Vergere sat curled up in feline repose on the other side of the room. She might have been napping, but Jacen doubted it.

He still hadn’t seen her sleep.

Every time he looked at her, he remembered coming to the coralcraft hidden below the Well, remembered finding Nom Anor tied up like a