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They say the truth hurts. A gasp of lunatic laughter bubbled wildly through his lips. They have no idea … The Embrace of Pain had been nothing but a scratch, the slave seed only a toothache—

His laughter choked itself to a smothered sob. He threw himself past Vergere into the hallway, and fled.

Running.

Every time Nom Anor glanced back toward the wall of rubble that so easily could have become his tomb, a spectral hand reached into his chest to twist his heart apart. “You assured me there would be no danger!” he said for the fourth time.

He spoke Basic—it would not do for the warriors to hear him complain—and he gritted his teeth, clenching arms and legs, because the warriors must not see him tremble.

“Nom Anor,” Vergere said with the patience that grows of wounds and exhaustion, “you are alive, and uninjured save for bumps and bruises.” She wept a continuous rain, mopping away her burns with tears. “What have you to complain of?”

Nom Anor looked once more at the wall of rubble; he could still feel the strangling panic of being so easily, casually, almost negligently shoved aside—and then the rumble of the ceiling’s collapse, and the howl of the maelstrom within the chamber, and the boil of dust, and the absolute night that had swallowed him … “You should have warned me how dangerous and erratic this ‘Dark Jedi’ power can be,” he insisted.

“Look around you. A dozen warriors, and you. And me. All living. If, instead of wielding this ‘dangerous power’ about which you whine, Jacen Solo had been calm, centered, and armed with his lightsaber …” One arm rippled in a shrug more eloquent than any words. “You saw what he did in the Nursery. There might have been survivors, but you and I would not be among them.”

Nom Anor only grunted. “I do not understand the purpose of this Jedi babble of the ‘dark side,’ either. What was the use of sparking this crisis? Here I am, at your insistence, lying to the Shaper Lord, manipulating his troops, lurking in this hideous place—not to mention placing my life at considerable risk—to trigger this … what? What has any of this to do with converting Jacen Solo to the True Way?”

Vergere looked up from tending her wounds. “Before one can learn truth, one must unlearn lies.”

“You mean, our truth. The True Way.” Nom Anor squinted at her. “Don’t you?”

“Our truth, Executor?” Her eyes seemed to expand into vast pools of unreadable darkness; in them he could see only his reflection. “Is there any other?”

NINE

THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

Ever deeper, ever darker, farther and farther below even the memory of light—

Jacen staggered out from a downlevel stairwell onto some forgotten catwalk, gasping. Had he been running for hours? For days? His legs refused another step, and there was no reason to force them.

No matter how far or fast he fled, he could never outrun himself.

The ancient duracrete floor of the catwalk, rotten with age and neglect, collapsed beneath his weight; a frantic grab onto a lichen-crusted rail left him hanging by one hand over a hundred-meter drop. This shaft might once have been a dump for wrecked air taxis: twisted, rusteaten metal tangled together below, a heap of curving knife edges and torn jagged points.

He hung there for a moment, imagining a long, long plunge, a slicing, ripping impact, a flash of colorless fire …

Maybe he should just let go. Maybe this was his only answer to the darkness inside him. Maybe he wouldn’t even scream on the way down.

There was only one way to find out.

His fingers loosened.

“Jacen! Hey, Jacen! Over here!” He knew the voice. He could not remember ever not knowing this voice; it was as familiar as his own. The voice was a trick—he knew it was a trick, it had to be, he’d been tricked this way before—but he could not make himself ignore it. With the deliberate caution of an experienced climber in a tricky traverse, he reached up and grabbed the rail with his free hand, so that he had enough strength to hold on while