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The warrior who had been kicked in the face didn’t get up. Anakin suspected his neck was broken. The unarmed Yuuzhan Vong was the only one still standing. He squatted next to Anakin and peered at him with eyes like algae-infested pools of water.

He looked—sick. The Yuuzhan Vong showed their rank by scarification and the sacrifice of body parts, but this one looked like an example of that gone horribly wrong. His hair hung in dank patches, and his face and neck were covered with scabs and open wounds. His scars looked swollen and unhealthy. Spiky growths that looked like dead or dying implants moldered on his shoulders and elbows. He stank of putrefaction.

After observing Anakin for a long moment, the Yuuzhan Vong rose, approached one of the bodies, and dug into its ear. He pulled out what looked like a worm of some sort and fed it into his own ear—or, rather, the festering hole that might once have been an ear. He shuddered, and his body spasmed as if in great pain. A thin drool of blood leaked from the orifice.

He turned back to Anakin and held out his hand.

“I am Vua Rapuung, Jeedai. You will come with me. I will help you.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The young Jeedai fell, her body gripped with convulsions. A strangled cry filled the vivarium.

“Interesting,” Mezhan Kwaad said, watching the reaction. “Do you see, Adept Yim, that—”

“I fail to see what interests you, Master Mezhan Kwaad,” a voice said from behind.

Nen Yim turned and immediately supplicated. Another master had just entered the vivarium, one so incredibly ancient the signs of his domain were entirely obscured. His headdress was a fragile, cloudlike mass, and both hands were those of a master. Both of his eyes had been replaced by yellow maa’its. He was accompanied by an adept aide.

“Master Yal Phaath,” Mezhan Kwaad said. “How good to see you, Ancient.”

“Answer me, Mezhan Kwaad. What so interests you about this creature’s agony? She is an infidel and cannot embrace the pain. There is no surprise in that and nothing interesting in it.”

“It is interesting because the provoker spineray causing her pain has been designed to do so selectively,” Mezhan Kwaad replied, “one nerve array at a time. What we have just seen is a reflex unknown in Yuuzhan Vong. We may now confidently map a part of the human nervous system that has no counterpart in our own.”

“And this is of what use?” Yal Phaath asked.

“We cannot shape what we do not know,” Mezhan Kwaad answered. “This species is new to us.”

“It strains the protocol,” the older master said. “What can be discovered that is not codified already?”

“But, Master,” Nen Yim said, supplicating as she did so. “Surely in a new species—” She broke off when the master flicked the gaze of his maa’its toward her.

“Are all of your adepts so insolent?” he asked dryly.

“I should hope not,” Mezhan Kwaad said stiffly.

Yal Phaath turned back to Nen Yim. His headdress writhed slightly in the air, turning a pale blue. “Adept, if knowledge is not to be found in the archives and sacred memories, what then does a shaper do?”

Fear glittered in Nen Yim’s nerves. What could he see, with those strange eyes? The maa’its probed the hidden regions of the spectrum, of course, and the domain of the microscopic, but did they peer farther yet, into the sins crouched beneath her skull? She contracted the tendrils of her headdress into a ball, a deep supplication. “We petition the Supreme Overlord, Master, that he might ask of the gods.”

“Correct. There are no new species, Adept. All life comes from the blood and flesh and bone of Yun-Yuuzhan. He knows them all. Knowledge cannot be created; that is the stuff of heresy. If the gods do not grant us knowledge, it is for good reason, and to seek further is an attempt to steal from them.”

“Yes, Master Yal Phaath.”

“I suspect this is not your fault, Adept. It is your own master who uses the provoker spineray so. You are susceptible to her influences.”

Mezhan Kwaad smiled gently. “The protocol of Tsong specifies