The Final Prophecy (7 page)

“Precisely. But without their HoloNet, such precise coordination becomes much more difficult, yes?”

Lah shrugged. “Of course,” he said. “But destroying the communications system is difficult,” he said. “There are many relay stations, not always placed so as to be easily
found. When one is destroyed, another may function, and the infidels have managed to repair or replace many we have destroyed.”

“The destruction of the HoloNet has never been a priority before,” Nas Choka said. “Now it is. And the gods have given the shapers a new weapon, one that should perfectly suit our needs.”

“That is well, Warlord.”

“It is.” He paced a moment.

“I’m giving you a new battle group. You will remain here, at Yuuzhan’tar, on alert to strike quickly. The infidels are growing confident; they will attack again, soon. I can feel it. And when they do, we will have something new to show them. Something quite new.”

Beneath the black sky of Yuuzhan’tar, Nen Yim moved invisibly. The guards at their posts did not blink as she passed; the singing ulubs stayed silent as she moved lightly across the grounds of the Supreme Overlord’s compound. Damuteks glowed with faint luminescence, and ships coming and going were pale viridian or blood-colored mists of light in the sky.

Yuuzhan’tar had not always been dark at night. For millennia, it had been the brightest world in the galaxy, never knowing true darkness. Unliving metal had pulsed with unholy energies, hemorrhaging light and heat and noxious fumes to burn the womb of night.

Now that unnatural work had been undone, and any brightness came from the stars alone. Tonight, not even they troubled the closed eyelids of the gods, for a tarp of cloud had been drawn overhead, blotting even the fierce beauty of the Core. So long controlled by machines, the climate of Yuuzhan’tar was also finding its natural state.

To Nen Yim, it seemed paradoxically unnatural. She had been born and raised on a worldship, nurtured by an organism so large that she had been like a microbe in its belly, kept warm and secure. The vagaries of weather were only recently known to her, and though her mind rationally recognized that on some long-ago day the Yuuzhan Vong had lived on a world where seasons came and went, where rain fell when it wished or not at all—that this was, indeed, the
natural course of things—her instincts rebelled at the capricious variability of it all. She was a shaper. She preferred shaping to being shaped.

And she despised being cold. She was cloaked in a creature of her own modification, a variant of the special ooglith cloakers that hunters wore. Its billion tiny sensory nodes gazed at the night, heard it, tasted it—and made her a part of it. For the first time in many, many months she was free of her guards, of her damutek. She did not fool herself that the freedom was real. If she did not emerge from her sanctum in a few hours, questions would be asked, and then a search would commence. Being invisible would not be enough, then. But the illusion was heady.

Though she had created the cloak for herself long before, there had never been any reason great enough to risk using it.

Now there was. A cryptic message, a meeting place, a possibility.

She passed from Shimrra’s fortress compound easily enough. Even a hunter could not have managed that, but the cloak of Nuun she wore was better than the usual sort. It hid her very thoughts, it disguised her mass as a movement of air.

She moved on rougher ground now, down a slope and then up to the platform where a shrine to Yun-Harla, the Trickster goddess, overlooked a vast pit that had once been sky-reaching buildings. Dark waters filled it now, and the burring cries of p’hiili rose in shrill chorus with the bass cooing of large-wattled ngom. Like the lim tree in her hortium, they were re-created creatures from the homeworld.

A single figure awaited her in the shrine, beneath a statue of Yun-Yuuzhan that had been made from the skulls and long bones of the conquered. It, too, carried a message from Yuuzhan Vong history—like the creatures of the pool, it proclaimed,
This world is ours now
.

The one waiting was male, lean, his hair knotted in a patterned scarf. All but three fingers had been cut from each hand. Nen Yim stood watching him for long moments. His eyes held a contained and fierce intelligence.

Priest
, she thought.
What could you want with me
?

She stood on the vua’sa’s spine. Death seemed near. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it wasn’t a priest, alone, in the dark.

She moved out of his sight and removed the cloak, then walked back to the shrine.

This time his gaze found her instantly. His body remained still.

“You’ve come at a strange time to perform your ablutions,” the priest said.

“I come when I am called,” Nen Yim answered.

“So must we all,” the priest answered. “I am Harrar.”

Nen Yim’s spine prickled. She knew that name.
So not just any priest. A very important one
.

“I am called Nen Yim, Honored One,” she replied.

“You are a master. Our ranks are equivalent, so we may dispense with honorifics. My time is short, and I suspect yours is shorter still.”

Nen Yim nodded.

“There are rumors of you, shaper,” he said. “You labor alone, under heavy guard in the Supreme Overlord’s compound. It is said you are most favored by the gods, and yet so few know you exist at all. Even a whisper is too loud a tone to speak of you in. It is said that some have died who could not keep that whisper in.”

“And yet you know of me.”

“I know when and whom to whisper to.” He smiled thinly. “You, apparently, do not.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean your attempts to contact the Quorealist underground have been clumsy.”

“I do not even know who or what the Quorealists are,” Nen Yim asserted.

“Quoreal was the Supreme Overlord before Shimrra. Many do not think the gods chose Shimrra to take his place, they believe that Shimrra dishonorably murdered him. Quoreal’s old followers are understandably a reticent group, but they still exist.”

“These are new facts to me, if facts they are.”

The priest shrugged one shoulder. “It does not matter who you thought you were trying to contact. The point is that if you persist, Shimrra will discover you, and I doubt that anyone is so favored by the gods as to survive that.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “What I wish to know is this: Why is Lord Shimrra’s most favored shaper trying to contact the pitiful remnants of his political enemies?”

“I know nothing of these politics,” Nen Yim replied. “Shimrra is the Supreme Overlord. I owe allegiance to none other. I desire allegiance to none other.”

Harrar cocked his head. “Come now. Why else contact us?”

“Us?”

Harrar’s fierce grin expanded a bit. “Of course. Clumsy you may have been, but you have succeeded. Shimrra has enemies. You have found them. What do you want from us?”

“I’ve just told you, I seek no enemy of my Supreme Overlord.”

“But you move in secret, without his knowledge. What do you want?”

Again, Nen Yim hesitated. “There is something I must see,” she said. “Something I believe to be of vital importance to the Yuuzhan Vong.”

“How intriguing. Shimrra will not let you see it?”

“I cannot ask him.”

“More intriguing still. What is this thing?”

“It is very far from here,” Nen Yim said. “I need help getting there. I need help finding it.”

“You obfuscate.”

“I am cautious. You tell me you are the enemy of my Lord Shimrra. In that case you are my enemy, ultimately, and I will not betray information into your hands.” She paused.

“Suppose I merely lied to you, to test your loyalty?”

“Then I cannot trust anything you say,” she said.

“In that case, our meeting would seem to be over.” He paused again. “But I warn you, you are not likely to get another chance. You say this thing is of vital importance to our future. How important?”

“It could be our doom.”

“And yet you fear Shimrra will not address it?”

“Yes.”

“You think you know better what is best for the Yuuzhan Vong than our Supreme Overlord?”

Nen Yim drew her shoulders back. “In this case, I do.”

“Very well. My pretense of disloyalty was meant to draw a confession of your own. I now believe you are loyal to the order of things. I swear by the very gods, I am also loyal to Lord Shimrra. May they devour me if I lie.” He paused, and lowered his voice. “But like you, I do not think his judgment is infallible. Tell me of this thing you must see. Clearly you are willing to risk disgrace and death. This is not the time to balk.”

Nen Yim clicked the nails of her master’s hand together. Like her own master, Mezhan Kwaad, she had deadly weapons concealed in it. If she decided the priest could not be trusted, the p’hiili would feed well this night.

“It begins with a commander named Ekh’m Val,” she said, softly.

His eyes widened at the name. “Ah,” he said.

“You have heard of him?”

“Indeed. I begin to understand your caution. Please continue.”

She told him, in brief, what she knew, but she left much out. She made no mention of her heresy, but couched her studies of the ship in orthodox terms. As she spoke, Harrar folded down into a cross-legged position and listened like a child does to the true-speaker in a crèche. When she was done, a moment of silence dragged a long tail.

“Astonishing,” he said, at last.

“You understand the implications, then?”

“Some of them. Others will come clear. And perhaps I understand some you do not.”

“I do not doubt that. The priesthood has its own knowledge, I’m sure.”

Harrar drew his lips back from his teeth. “How kind of you to think so,” he said.

“I meant no offense.”

“Naturally not.” He gestured. “Sit with me.”

She complied, resting on a small polyp.

“You swear to me that all you have told me is true?”

“I swear it, by the gods,” Nen Yim replied.

He nodded, then looked at her seriously. “Your master, Mezhan Kwaad, is said to have claimed there were no gods.”

“She was, for all her virtues, perhaps insane,” Nen Yim pointed out.

“Yes, my concern exactly.”

“You fear for my sanity?”

“I might, save for one thing. Are you aware of the heresy?”

Her blood went cold and heavy. “Heresy?”

“Among the Shamed Ones. The obscene belief that the
Jeedai
are somehow the saviors of the Shamed.”

“Yes,” Nen Yim replied, hoping her composure hadn’t slipped. “I was, after all, on Yavin Four when that heresy began.”

“You were, weren’t you? You’re a part of the story, in
fact, at least in some versions. In a few, you died gloriously. In all, you vanished.”

“I am not current on the folklore of the Shamed Ones, I fear,” Nen Yim said, stiffly.

“No, I doubt that you are. This heresy now has a leader—a Prophet. Little is known of him, but he is gaining in power. Not long ago, he made a prophecy—of a new world, a home for the Shamed Ones, a promise of redemption. A living world.” He placed his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “Does this not sound like your Zonama Sekot?”

“I know nothing of this Prophet or his babblings,” Nen Yim said.

“Again, I do not doubt you.” His eyes narrowed. “Do you know where this supposed world is?”

“No.”

“So you would have me smuggle you from beneath Shimrra’s nose, equip you with a ship—”

“I can supply my own ship,” Nen Yim interrupted.

His eyes turned appraising, but he resumed. “Very well. So I need only smuggle you out, outfit you, and help you find this planet—which Shimrra claims is destroyed.”

“That is what I desire, yes.”

“I cannot do that,” he said. “I am too highly placed. I will be noticed.”

“Then I have come in vain,” Nen Yim said, preparing the weapon in her finger.

“Perhaps not,” the priest said. “Perhaps the Prophet of whom I spoke could aid you?”

Nen Yim relaxed, marginally. “You counsel me to collaborate with a heretic?”

“If you are correct about the threat this planet poses, then a temporary alliance with a heretic could certainly be forgiven. You were right, by the way, not to ask Shimrra to help you. Neither Ekh’m Val nor any of his crew remains
alive. The Supreme Overlord fears this secret. That in itself tells me it is vitally important.”

“On that we agree,” Nen Yim allowed. “Still—what good could come of contacting this ‘Prophet’? Even if he was so disposed, how could he help me?”

“How many Shamed Ones work within the Supreme Overlord’s compound?”

“I do not know.”

“How many of them can you name?”

She snorted. “One.”

Harrar showed his teeth again at the thinly veiled reference.

“This heresy is widespread and well organized. It, as much as your Zonama Sekot, is a threat to the well-being of our people. I feel certain that if this ‘Prophet’ can be convinced you are with his cause, he will find a way to help you. Especially if, as you say, you have a ship.”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s getting the ship off the surface of Yuuzhan’tar and out of this system that is the problem.”

A new suspicion struck her. “You want to use me as bait.”

“Indeed. But I will not pounce on the Prophet when he comes to free you. I will wait, until such time as you deem your mission complete. If done in exactly the right way, it might even be possible to convince Lord Shimrra that you were a hostage of the Shamed Ones, rather than the instigator of the expedition.”

“You propose a trade in deceits.”

“Consider. Two great threats to the Yuuzhan Vong—your mysterious planet, my Prophet. We can be rid of them both. If all goes well, you and I continue to serve our people. If not, we go to the gods, who know our motives were pure. Can you see a better path?”

“No,” Nen Yim said. “I cannot. But I know little of this Prophet. I have no way of contacting him.”

“I cannot contact him directly, of course,” Harrar said.
“But there are ways of bringing things to his ears. I can arrange this. Are we agreed?”

“We are,” Nen Yim said.