Refugee: Force Heretic II (9 page)

“Thank you, my friend.” Blaine Harris inclined his head in the direction of the P’w’eck ambassador. “And you, of course,” he added to Han and Leia, “are very welcome to attend also. I’m sure it will be a fascinating glimpse into a culture we’ve theorized about for many years, but never had the opportunity to see with our own eyes.”

“We’d be honored,” Leia said. “The Galactic Federation of Free Alliances will be very interested to observe the ceremony.”

General Panib stood, and the others around the table followed suit. “I hope you won’t be offended if I call this meeting to an end, but I have urgent matters to discuss with the Deputy Prime Minister.”

“Of course.” Leia accepted the explanation with her usual diplomatic aplomb. “And thank you for taking the time to explain the situation here. There are still some aspects I’d like to discuss in more detail at a later date, if possible.”

“It would be my pleasure to accommodate you,” the general said. He spoke and moved with a confidence that had been lacking before the Deputy Prime Minister’s news. “And I shall ensure that Salis D’aar spaceport is secured for your arrival. Hopefully with Thanas in custody, the situation will cool down a little now.”

Leia bowed in acknowledgment.

The Deputy Prime Minister bowed also as Leia and
Han’s party filed toward the exit. Lwothin and his two bodyguards followed close behind, and although he made no effort to come too close, Jaina still made sure to position herself carefully between her parents and the powerful saurian.

Once outside, the P’w’eck fluted in his loud, melodic way.

“Lwothin says that this is a pivotal time for all our species,” C-3PO interpreted. More fluting and gesturing followed. “He also says that he is glad that you will be attending the ceremony. The Keeramak will be pleased when it hears the news.”

Without waiting for a response, the P’w’eck headed off down the corridor, bodyguards in tow.

“Chirpy fellow, ain’t he?” Han said.

“Something’s not adding up here,” Jaina said. She was glad the meeting was over and she was once again able to be involved in discussions. “How can the Bakuran resistance be everywhere and yet still be a minority?”

“Maximum disruption,” Leia said, “for minimum effort. We could be seeing the Peace Brigade at work here.”

“What’s left of them,” Han muttered. “It’s like getting a dent out of a deflector grille, even after Ylesia.”

“At least we’re not too late this time,” Jaina said, the destruction of N’zoth still fresh in her mind.

“That’s assuming, of course,” Leia said, “that we have the full story.”

“The story, Yu’shaa. Tell us the story,” whispered the acolytes crowding the darkened audience hall. “Tell us about the
Jeedai.”

The Prophet gazed down at them from his throne, his expression hidden behind a mask of truly horrific proportions. A maze of scars and tattoos, it was barely recognizable as a face.

“Who asks?” he demanded in accordance with the service.

“We do, Yu’shaa,” the pilgrims responded with a unified bowing of their heads. “We are the Shamed Ones, and we come to you for wisdom.”

The Prophet nodded, satisfied by the formal response. Warders outside the hall had carefully instructed the audience on how and when to speak. The being on the inside of the mask smiled to himself, knowing that these conventions were nothing more than a sham to encourage obedience to him and, ultimately, rebellion against his enemies.

Nom Anor rose from his seat on the throne and removed the mask. The hideous creation was meant to represent Shimrra and the gods, while its removal symbolized the casting off of the old ways. He had devised every detail of the ceremony with the help of Shoon-mi and Kunra, his chief acolytes, but no matter how many times he did it, it still felt clumsy. Only the reactions of the converts convinced him that it was working.

The acolytes looked wonderingly up at Nom Anor’s “real” face—not aware that this was just another mask, an ooglith masquer designed to make him look like a member of the Shamed caste.

“The gods have granted me a vision,” he announced. “It is a vision of a galaxy of beautiful worlds—worlds in which all Yuuzhan Vong can live in peace as well as in glory, free of shame, and with everything their hearts and souls desire.”

In recent weeks, Nom Anor had learned to become more animated and expressive when addressing the groups that came to hear him speak. At first he had just sat there and spoken, but he soon found the attention of the Shamed Ones would drift beneath his dull monotones. So he’d adopted some of the techniques he had observed in Vuurok I’pan—a storyteller from the group of Shamed Ones
that had first taken him in during his initial exile to Yuuzhan’tar’s underworld. Nom Anor clearly recalled how I’pan had told the story of Vua Rapuung, and how those gathered had listened intently, hanging from his every word—even though they had heard the tale so many times before.

“But as I gazed upon this vision,” Nom Anor went on with dramatic flair, “a dark shadow came between my hungry eyes and the sight of the worlds that should be ours. The huge, black shadow had rainbows that shined from its eyes; its mighty hands were darkened from bloodstains.”

The congregation listened spellbound, just as I’pan’s audience had once listened to him. Nom Anor raised a hand to demand silence—an unnecessary gesture since the silence was already profound, but one that served to reinforce his command over the gathering.

“The gods opposed the great shadow, the Rainbow-Eyed One, and they brought forth their holy warriors to strike it down!”

He stared down at the crowd. “You know the name of these warriors.”

The whisper surrounded him.
“Jeedai!”

He nodded his approval, and leaned forward as though to impart a great secret. And it
was
a great secret, for uttering it could easily mean the death of everyone in the room.

“Yes, the gods sent the
Jeedai
to drive away the Rainbow-Eyed Enemy. For weeks and months they fought. The Shadow killed many of the holy warriors, and kept the rest at bay. Night fell across the galaxy, and it seemed as though the war was hopelessly lost. Our home had been taken from us! The Yuuzhan Vong were no longer favored by the gods, for we had debased ourselves on the altar of the Shadow!”

“No,” moaned one in the congregation, shaking his
head. Even from his place at the front of the congregation, Nom Anor could smell the rank odor of the Shamed One’s decaying arm.

He smiled inwardly. It was all too easy to work his will over the loose-knit congregations of heretics that infested the capital. Their members were weak and desperate, while he was strong and resourceful.

“No indeed,” he said. “Even as despair overcame me at the defeat of the
Jeedai
, even as it seemed as though the Rainbow-Eyed One would never be stopped, the gods gave me hope. For just when all was dark, I saw the grasses of the field turn against the Shadow. I saw them rise and wrap around the feet of the Rainbow-Eyed One. The Enemy stumbled and fell—and then the grasses rose to bind the Shadow’s mighty limbs! The grasses held this Foe of the gods to the ground, wrapping themselves around his throat and squeezing the very life from him, removing the influence of his black heart from the land!

“By themselves, each blade of grass was weak; but together they were
mighty!”

The congregation sighed with relief and joy at the exclamation.

“Let us be as the grass and twine about the feet of our adversary to bring him crashing down. For individually we may be weak, but like the grass, together we can be strong.”

The congregation hissed its appreciation, and Nom Anor basked in their approval. In all the years he’d served as an executor, he had never had such an audience. It had been impossible to speak honestly or openly for fear of offending the warmaster or the priests—or, through them, the gods. Now he had the attention of hundreds, and they would listen to anything he said.

He was wise enough to realize, though, that such attention would last only as long as they approved of his message. They devoured the nonsense about the Jedi
along with his message of self-empowerment—and while he had no great belief in the former, he was very much in favor of the latter. The Shamed Ones were his ride back to the surface. He was happy to give them the means so he could achieve the end.

The allure of the means wasn’t lost on him. As an executor, he hadn’t properly appreciated the need and strength of the lower castes. The Shamed Ones were indeed weak individually, as he taught in his sermons, but this was easily made up for with their overwhelming numbers. The majority had belonged to the worker caste before their Shaming, but some had been of higher rank. Moreover, it wasn’t just the Shamed Ones who answered his call. Converts to his Jedi cult were increasingly drawn from junior members of the un-Shamed—from the workers, the shapers, the warriors, the priests, and the intendants. The shapers knew the tools of their trade, the priests and intendants knew how to organize, and the warriors knew how to fight. Anyone who descended upon one of these meetings to make arrests was in for a nasty surprise.

Although it was hard to remember sometimes, those in his audience weren’t particularly gullible. They weren’t uneducated; they weren’t stupid. They just wanted authority, and he would give it to them.

When the muttering died away, he returned to the throne and motioned the audience to gather around him. In reality, the chamber was just a large basement hundreds of meters below the spires of Yuuzhan’tar, and his “throne” was just a chair coated in moss of different shades to make it look better than it really was. It didn’t matter. The congregation saw what it wanted to see, just as it heard what it wanted to hear.

Nom Anor leaned forward to talk to them with less ceremony. It was time to give them
the Message
.

“How many here have met the
Jeedai
face-to-face?”
he asked. “How many have heard the message from their own lips, in their own tongue?”

He waited for someone to answer in the affirmative but, as always, no one did. In all the sermons he’d given, not one of the Shamed Ones who came to him had ever met or even seen a single example of the ones they venerated and looked to for liberation.

“
I
have met the
Jeedai
,” he said. “
I
have gazed upon the Twins and seen their power;
I
have wondered at the
Jeedai
-who-was-shaped;
I
witnessed the death of perhaps the greatest of them all, the one called Anakin Solo, who gave his life so that the ones he loved might live; and
I
have spoken to their elders and heard their message with my own ears. That I have done all these things and am here before you now attests to the truth of what I have told you. If what I say is not the truth, then may the gods strike me down here and now where I stand and erase this blasphemy from the heart of the galaxy!”

Nom Anor could feel the congregation holding its collective breath, and he hid another a smile as he dragged out the pause a little longer than was strictly necessary. He wanted the acolytes to realize that they were still afraid of the old gods, that old habits died hard.

He never grew tired of seeing the impact his words had upon the Shamed Ones. It never failed to amuse him how he could manipulate their emotions. Strictly speaking, Nom Anor’s claims weren’t lies. He
had
met a lot of Jedi in the course of his duty, just not in the capacity of an ally. Nor had he ever stopped to listen to their philosophy. They’d usually been on the receiving end of one of his schemes to betray and destroy them, or he’d been doing his level best to survive when those schemes went wrong.

When the silence was as taut as a stretched ligament, he began to tell them the story of Vua Rapuung, the Shamed One who had found redemption in the actions
of the Jedi Knight called Anakin Solo. They had all heard it before, of course; none of them would have made it this far had they not been able to give at least a rough outline of the story, thereby demonstrating that
someone
thought them trustworthy. But this was the “official” version, as taught by the Prophet. It contained all the correct details in the right order, and was consistent with the known facts. It conveyed precisely the right message at exactly the right time.

So Nom Anor intended it, anyway. Again, lacking true belief, he could only judge by the reactions of those who came to hear him speak. They listened rapturously and left enlivened, empowered to spread the Message. All knew that being associated in any way with the Prophet would mean torture and death; the keepers of the old gods were jealous and did not tolerate challengers to their beliefs.

How far knowledge of the existence of the cult had spread was hard to say. Did Shimrra lose concentration during his nightly flagellations as he pondered the spreading rot? Nom Anor could only hope so.

“… and there the
Jeedai
heresy might have ended, had it not been witnessed by the Shamed Ones watching from the edge of the battle—by the shapers’ damutek. They spread the Message—and to this day the Message continues to spread, from mouth to ear among those like us. There is another way, a way that leads to acceptance, and a new word for hope:
Jeedai.”

Nom Anor paused at the end of the tale to sip from a drink bulb that Shoon-mi had ensured was at hand before the acolytes had filed into the room. The ending of the tale was identical to the ending he had first heard from I’pan. He told it this way to remind himself both of the story’s origins and of I’pan’s fate. I’pan’s death at the hands of a band of warriors that had come searching for stolen provisions—thefts I’pan had conducted with Nom
Anor in order to keep their small band of outlaws alive—had galvanized Nom Anor into action. Without that to motivate him, he might have still been living in anonymity, waiting for his luck to run out instead of making his own.

“I shall answer your questions now,” he said after a moment.

There were always questions.

“Did Yun-Yuuzhan create the
Jeedai?”
was the first, shouted by a female near the front.