Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Rebel Dreams_ Enemy Lines I - Aaron Allston [166]
Jacen considered this, then dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Then I’m not sorry.” The call continued in the Force, a needle-sharp pang that pulled at Jacen deep inside his chest. “And I must go.”
Now Akanah opened her eyes. “What of your training?”
“I’m grateful for what you have shown me so far.” Jacen turned to leave. “I’ll continue when I return.”
“No.” As Akanah spoke, the meditation circle exit vanished behind a vine-strewn wall. “I cannot permit that.”
Jacen stopped and turned to face her. “Illusions aren’t necessary. If you don’t wish me to return, I won’t.”
“What I don’t wish is for you to leave.” Akanah floated over to him and lowered her own feet. She was so immersed in the White Current that even the delicate blada leaves did not pop beneath her weight. “It’s too soon. You’re not ready.”
Jacen forced himself to remain patient. After all, he was the one who had sought out the Fallanassi. “I have completed many trainings, Akanah. What I have learned is that every order believes its way is the only way.”
“I am not speaking of monks and witches, Jacen Solo. I am speaking of you.” Her dark eyes caught his gaze. “Your feelings on this are unclear. Someone calls, and you go without knowing why.”
“Then you feel it, too?”
“No, Jacen. You are as clumsy in the Current as your uncle. Your feelings leave ripples, and ripples can be read. Does the call come from your brother?”
“No. Anakin died in the war.” It had been eight years, and Jacen could finally speak those words with some measure of acceptance, with some recognition of the purpose his brother’s death had served in the Force. It had been the turning point in the war, when the Jedi finally learned how to fight the Yuuzhan Vong—and not become monsters themselves. “I’ve told you that.”
“Yes, but is it him?” Akanah stepped closer to Jacen, and his nostrils filled with the scent of the waha plants that grew in the temple bathing pool. “After someone sinks beneath the Current, a circle of ripples remains behind. Perhaps it is the ripples you sense.”
“That does not make what I feel any less real,” Jacen countered. “Sometimes, the effect is all we can know of the cause.”
“Do you remember my words only so you can use them to spar with me?” Akanah’s hand came up as though to bat him across the ear, and his own hand reflexively rose to block. She shook her head in disgust. “You are a dreadful student, Jacen Solo. You hear, but you do not learn.”
It was a rebuke to which Jacen had grown accustomed during his five-year search for the true nature of the Force. The Jensaarai, the Aing-Tii, even the Witches of Dathomir had all said similar things to him—usually when his questions about their view of the Force grew too probing. But Akanah had more reason than the others to be disappointed in him. Striking another would be anathema to any Adept of the White Current. All Akanah had done was lift her hand; it had been Jacen who interpreted the action as an attack.
Jacen inclined his head. “I learn, but sometimes slowly.” He was thinking of the two apparitions he had already seen of his dead brother, the first when a cavern beast on Yuuzhan’tar used one to lure him into its throat, the second on Zonama, when Sekot had taken Anakin’s form while they talked. “You think I’m giving form to this call, that I impose my own meaning on the ripples I feel.”
“What I think is not important,” Akanah said. “Still yourself, Jacen, and see what is really in the Current.”
Jacen closed his eyes and opened himself to the White Current in much the same way he would have opened himself to the Force. Akanah and the other Adepts taught that the Current and the Force were separate things, and that was true—but only in the sense that any current was different from the ocean in which it flowed. In their