"Are you suggesting, Prefect, that our priests are not acting out of the goodness of their hearts?"

"Lord, I have seen many hearts, and few showed evidence of goodness."

"Clever," Shimrra said slowly. "That's the word everyone who knows you or who has had dealings with you uses-clever."

To Nom Anor's relief, Shimrra deactivated the lightsaber. In another scenario, Nom Anor might have remained prophet of the heretics, and even then be attempting to topple Shimrra from the throne. He had faced that choice in the Unknown Regions-How telling! - only to decide: better by Shimrra's side than overlord to a mult.i.tude of outcasts.

"What does one like yourself make of the whisperings that circulate among the elite," Shimrra asked from his simple chair, "that the G.o.ds have become angered by my decisions-as far back to my deciding to tip Quoreal from the throne, usurp his position as Supreme Overlord, and p.r.o.nounce this galaxy our new home?"

Nom Anor risked adopting a cross-legged posture on the floor. From the far side of the moat, Onimi watched him with visible delight.

"May I speak freely, Lord?"

"You had better," Onimi said.

Shimrra glanced from Onimi to Nom Anor, then nodded his enormous head.

"I would answer that many of the high caste fail to grasp that the actions you took were a tribute to the G.o.ds; actions no less bold than those taken by Yun-Yuuzhan when he gave of himself to bring the universe into being."

Shimrra leaned forward.

"You impress me, Prefect. Continue."

Nom Anor grew more confident.

"Many of us had accepted as fact that the generations of wandering through the intergalactic void had been a test of faith-which, as you yourself pointed out, we failed miserably, by quarreling among ourselves and worshiping false G.o.ds, weakening the hinges of our own gates."

Shimrra nodded sagely.

"Any group without opposition falls inexorably into decay and tyranny-or both."

"But you, Dread Lord, saw the arduous journey for what it was: a consequence of our previous failures. You understood that our shapers were fast approaching the limits of traditional knowledge-that they were essentially powerless to repair our deteriorating worldships; that our priests were likewise unable to rescue our society from the depths to which it had sunk; that our warriors, left without a war, had nowhere to turn but upon one another. We were dying in the void, Lord, and were it not for your toppling of Quoreal and his cautious followers, the Yuuzhan Vong might have ended there."

Shimrra stared at him.

"Oh, you are a dangerous person, Prefect." He glanced at Onimi.

"But as my familiar knows well, I have a liking for danger." He paused, then added: "I will educate you about the G.o.ds. The question is not whether they exist, but if we have any further need of them. Their fall began during our long journey, when they failed to come to our aid. As you have undoubtedly learned, Prefect, one cannot keep loyal servants if one neglects them. So the fault lies with them. Absent our b.l.o.o.d.y support, absent our solicitations and praises, what would they be left with? The G.o.ds may have created us, but it is we who sustain them through worship. Now they are bereft because the roles are reversed. They are angry because they have been forced to recognize that their hour has arrived; that the time has come to surrender power to Shimrra and the new order."

Again, Shimrra ignited the lightsaber and waved it about, as if to emphasize his remarks.

"This is the greater war, Prefect-the Yuuzhan Vong against the G.o.ds."

Nom Anor gulped.

"War, August Lord?"

"Nothing less! Because the G.o.ds guard their power jealously. But surely you recognize this, Prefect. Would you go quietly into retreat, or would you fight to the last to preserve your status? Abandon all the consuls who now answer to you? Murder even High Prefect Drathul if necessary to hold your ground?"

"I would fight, Dread Lord," Nom Anor said, more forcefully than he intended.

"And I would expect no less of you. But there is a problem inherent in all this, for we find ourselves surrounded by true believers, and to some extent they pose a greater threat to the future of the Yuuzhan Vong than that posed by the G.o.ds themselves."

Nom Anor smiled inwardly.

"The G.o.ds have their place, Lord."

"Indeed they do. Religious ritual keeps the priests and intendants busy; it keeps the shapers from becoming too ambitious; it keeps the warriors at bay; it keeps the workers from discarding the caste system; and it keeps Shamed Ones from rising up in open revolt. Therefore, if I am to remake this world, I must tread carefully."

Shimrra's words only reinforced Nom Anor's belief that faith was an extravagance, and that true believers were the easiest to manipulate.

"I must tread carefully," Shimrra repeated, almost to himself.

"When faith is under a.s.sault and the social order is cracking apart, the weak do not want explanations; they want rea.s.surance and someone to blame." He laughed quietly. "Ah, but I'm telling you what you already know. Look what wonders this worked with the Shamed Ones who have turned to heresy on Yuuzhan'tar and our other worlds. Do they want explanations?

No! They cry out for my blood."

Despite his best efforts, Nom Anor began to quiver.

"I see that my remarks frighten you, Prefect. Perhaps you think they smack of heresy, such as the Prophet preaches to his blind following. Would you lump me in with our own Mezhan Kwaad and Nen Yim, or Shedao Shai and his sad devotion to the Embrace of Pain?"

"I know little of those things, Dread Lord."

"Naturally."

Nom Anor didn't like the sound of it. Executions came easily to Shimrra, who was easily displeased. He had had shaper Ch'Gang Hool killed because of Hool's seeming failure to govern the World Brain and prevent the itching plague. He had also executed Commander Ekh'm Val, who had discovered-or rather rediscoveredZonama Sekot. Nom Anor himself had been targeted for execution because of his gullibility regarding Ebaq 9. In the days since, his dreams of power and glory had been fulfilled, but what if Shimrra should decide to safeguard the secret of Zonama Sekot by having Nom Anor killed-just as Nom Anor had killed Nen Yim and the priest Harrar to safeguard his secret? Shimrra was contemplating the lightsaber.

"A curious weapon, is it not? It requires the wielder to close with an enemy in personal combat. Were it not for their misguided beliefs, the Jeedai might actually be deserving of admiration. There may yet be a way to incorporate their doctrines into our religion. We must be careful not to repeat past mistakes. Perhaps we need to look for ways to conquer the hearts and minds of the species that dominate here." He looked at Nom Anor. "Have the Jeedai never been defeated, Prefect?"

As Nom Anor recounted what he knew of the Jedi Purge, he considered what killing Shimrra might have meant for the Yuuzhan Vong. By a.s.sa.s.sinating Emperor Palpatine, the Rebel Alliance had unleashed decades of turmoil with local warlords, and incessant battles with hostile species.

"Tell me of the young Jeedai who learned the True Way, only to betray it," Shimrra said.

"Jacen Solo."

Shimrra knew the name.

"The same who lured Tsavong Lah to his death... I have been blaming the shapers for not being able to supervise the World Brain, but I begin to suspect that this Jeedai is somehow responsible. When I interact with the Brain, I sense its reluctance, its miseducation. I have had to instruct the Brain, as one would a disobedient child-a child of warriors who has been mistakenly raised in the creche of the priests." Shimrra rolled the lightsaber between his hands.

"And the Force. I've heard it described by heretics as the lingering exhalation of Yun-Yuuzhan."

Nom Anor's words to his followers returned to haunt him.

"I would not grant it such importance, August Lord. The Force is merely a power the Jedi have learned to draw from, over twenty or more generations. But not the Jedi alone. A group called the Sith also made use of the power, and were perhaps responsible for the Purge that occurred even while we-you-were finalizing our invasion plans." Shimrra folded his arms across his chest. "High Priest Jakan has made mention of these Sith. Are they in hiding?"

Nom Anor shook his head.

"Sadly, their flame has gone out of this galaxy, Dread Lord. The heretics claim that in the Jedi are combined all aspects of the G.o.ds. But in fact the Jedi are not flawless, nor are they beyond being outwitted and defeated. They have been captured, killed, almost turned to our own purposes."

"As you yourself demonstrated at Zonama Sekot." Shimrra's mood became dark. "I am eager to deliver an end to our enemy before that planetary nemesis undoes us." He sharpened his gaze On Nom Anor. "Are we safe, Prefect?"

Nom Anor mustered his courage.

"With any luck, Dread Lord, Zonama Sekot is a dead world. If not, it certainly has no sense of where it is, let alone where we are."

SEVEN.

Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker stood in the trapezoidal entrance to the cliff dwelling that had been their home and shelter on Zonama Sekot for what had felt like three standard weeks. The span of time was only a guess based on human circadian rhythms, because the days had been anything but regular since the living world's abrupt jump to hypers.p.a.ce, lasting anywhere from fifteen to forty hours, as Zonama's governing intelligence struggled to rea.s.sert control.

Torrential rain continued to lash the Middle Distance, driven by gales powerful enough to snap and topple the giant boras and strip the reddish trees of their globular leaves. The sky was an inverted silver bowl, with ma.s.sive storm clouds stacked high in all directions, deep purple to black, and incandescent with continuous flashes of lightning.

Peals of thunder resonated from the bare rock walls of the chasms that housed the cliff dwellings. As if from deep below the surface came a hollow moan, like breath across the narrow mouth of a container.

Many believed that the sound was caused by wind rushing across Zonama Sekot's three-hundred-meter-high hyperdrive vanes. Caught in an updraft, three sheets of lamina building material spiraled up from the floor of the chasm and disappeared over the rim.

"This place is coming apart," Mara said.

Luke nodded but said nothing. He had his right arm around Mara's shoulders, and the side of her face was pressed to the soft weave of his dark cloak. The persistent gusts whipped Mara's red-gold hair about her face and across her mouth. To Luke's left stood R2-D2, emitting a steady stream of mournful chirrs and chatterings, his status indicator flashing from red to blue and his third tread extended to keep himself from being blown over. Luke put his left hand on the astromech droid's hemispherical head.

"Don't worry, Artoo. We'll come through this all right."

R2 swiveled his primary photoreceptor to Luke and warbled in renewed hope. Mara snorted a laugh.

"What a guy. Always a kind word for pets, small children, and droids."

The cliff dwelling-walls of tightly fitted stones enclosing two small s.p.a.ces-was located in the canyon's middle tier of natural ledges.

Cavities in the bare rock face opposite were likewise part.i.tioned into hundreds of separate dwellings, but many of the vine-and-lamina suspension bridges that had joined the community's two halves were gone, as were the pulleyed platforms the Ferroans used for vertical transportation.

Two kilometers below raged a ribbon of muddy water, dammed in places by knots of fallen boras and other detritus. Word had it that similar conditions prevailed throughout the Middle Distance, which was the name given to the equatorial region where the Ferroans had settled more than seventy-five years earlier, when Zonama Sekot had resided on the other side of the galactic plane, in the Outer Rim of known s.p.a.ce.

"Corran is coming," Luke announced in a matter-of-fact tone.

Mara slipped out of his embrace and leaned out the entrance to gaze around, one hand clasping her long hair.

"Where?" she said, just loudly enough to be heard. "I don't see-"

She interrupted herself when she saw his head poke above the rungs of a wooden ladder that rose from a lower tier. Soaked to the bone, Corran held his jacket closed at the neck. Water dripped from his furrowed face and the graying beard and mustache that framed his mouth.

His limp hair was pulled into a short tail at the back. He smiled when he noticed Mara, and hurried for the cliff dwelling, using his free hand to sluice some of the water from his forehead.

"Jacen and Saba's airship has been spotted downvalley!" he shouted into the wind. "They should arrive any minute."

Luke stepped out into the rain and wind to glance at the landing platform that jutted out over the canyon.

"They might need some help. We'd better be on hand to meet them."

He looked back at R2, who was whining in apprehension. "Stay here, Artoo.

We'll be right back."

The three Jedi hurried for the ladder. Whereas Luke and Mara had been on Zonama Sekot for almost three months, Corran had arrived only three weeks earlier, in the company of Tahiri Veila and three Yuuzhan Vong agents. Two of the Yuuzhan Vong were now dead, and the third was believed to have escaped from the living world short of the act of sabotage that had hurled it through hypers.p.a.ce. First to reach the edge of the wind-tossed walkway that accessed the landing platform, Mara came to a sudden halt.

"Is this thing safe?" Luke regarded it for a moment.

"It'll hold!" Corran frowned. "Could you be a bit more specific?"

Luke squeezed past him, out onto the swinging walkway, where he jumped in place, twice.

"See?" Mara threw Corran a look. "You can take the kid from Tatooine.. ."

Leaving the remark unfinished, she dashed after Luke. Corran was only steps behind when they reached the platform itself, square and cantilevered by thick timbers anch.o.r.ed in the cliff face. From downvalley, and drifting to and fro in the wind, appeared a cl.u.s.ter of what might have been balloons, holding aloft an oblong wooden gondola with an aft cabin.

"There she blows," Corran said.

"You're not kidding," Mara said. She looked at Luke. "They'll never be able to land!"

"They will. They have the Force at their backs." Luke set himself in the near-horizontal rain and focused his attention on the approaching airship. Through the Force, he could feel Mara and Corran join him, and he could also feel the tremendous power Jacen and Saba were exercising to prevent the airship from being blown where the howling wind wanted to take it. Confidence surged through him. The Jedi were working not against the natural forces, but in harmony with them, availing themselves of just those gusts that would maneuver the airship to the destination they had chosen. Had there been better forewarning of the trap the three Yuuzhan Vong agents had sprung, Sekot also might have been able to maneuver Zonama through hypers.p.a.ce to a safe landing. But the jump to lightspeed had been inadvertent-though fortunately in place of the planned destruction of the planet.

When Zonama Sekot first emerged from transit, conditions were even worse than those that followed. Luke could remember staring into an unfamiliar night sky; then, at daybreak, an enormous sun ballooning on the horizon like an explosion, too brilliant to regard, and radiating such heat that huge expanses of tampasi had burst into flame. Seismic events had opened yawning, zigzagging fissures on the high plateaus, and gigantic slabs of rock had been thrust from the parted ground. Forest fires filled the already scorching air with smoke, cinder, and ash. As protection from the dangerous rays of the star in whose clutches Zonama had been thrown, Sekot had engineered cloud cover from what moisture it could suck from the planetary mantle. But the damage had already been done.

Breathable air was in short supply, and the plasma cores of the hyperdrive engines were dazed. Then, just when Luke had feared the worst for everyone huddled in the shelters and deep in the canyons, where the air was slightly cooler if no less oxygen-deprived, Zonama had jumped again. Whether because of further misfortune or at Sekot's direction, no one could say. But rain had been falling ever since. Under the guidance of the five Jedi, the airship completed its descent and made a satisfactory landing on the platform.

Luke, Mara, and Corran had the ship tethered to its docking cleats even before Jacen and Saba emerged from the small cabin.

"Welcome back," Luke said, clapping his nephew on the shoulders, then hugging him. Jacen's brown hair was combed back and fell almost to his shoulders now, but he had recently shaved his beard. His cloak was stiff with dried mud. Saba, in contrast, wore minimal garments, and her black reptilian skin glistened.

"You're shivering," Mara said to Jacen while she was hugging him.

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not." She nodded toward the cliff dwelling. "Let's get you inside. We have a fire going."

R2-D2 was chirping in excitement when the waterlogged Jedi filed through the trapezoidal entrance. A nourishing fire blazed in the center of the room, smoke escaping through a natural chimney. Elsewhere were glow sticks, sleeping rolls, gear, and provisions, moved there from Jade Shadow.

"Are either of you hungry?" Mara asked Jacen and Saba when everyone had warmed themselves.

"Starved," Jacen said.

The Barabel Jedi nodded. "This one az well."