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“The baby,” Mara demanded. “Tell me about my son.”

“The Force burns bright in him. The darkness hasn’t reached there. Something keeps it at bay.”

“Yes!” Mara whispered, clenching her fists.

Cilghal’s eyes wobbled together so her gaze met Mara’s. “It’s you, isn’t it?” the healer said. “You’re putting everything into keeping the disease from entering your womb.”

“I can’t let it,” Mara said. “I can’t.”

“Mara,” the healer said, “you are declining at a terrifying rate.”

“I only have to last until the birth,” Mara pointed out. “Then I can start taking the tears again.”

“At this rate, I’m not sure you will survive the birth,” Cilghal told her. “Even if we induce it, or do it surgically. You’re already that weak.”

“I don’t lose,” Mara told her ferociously. “I’ll be strong enough when the time comes. It can’t be much longer, can it?”

“You aren’t listening to me,” Cilghal said. “You could die.”

“I am listening to you,” Mara replied. “It’s just that what you’re telling me doesn’t change anything. I’m going to have this baby, and he’s going to be healthy. I’m not going back on the serum. I’ve come through tougher things than this, Cilghal.”

“Then let me help you. Let me lend you some of my strength.”

Mara hesitated. “I’ll report every day for monitoring and whatever healing you can accomplish. Is there anything else I can do?”

“More than once a day,” Cilghal said. “I can strengthen the power of your body to fight. I can cleanse it of some toxins. I can fight the symptoms. But the disease itself … there’s nothing. No, I can think of nothing else to do.” Despair and failure seemed to drift from the healer.

“I need your help, Cilghal,” Mara said. “Don’t give up on me yet.”

“I would never, Mara.”

“Good. I need to eat, but I’m not hungry, and I can’t keep anything down. I’m sure you can help me with that, right?”

“That I can help with,” Cilghal replied.

“It’s one thing at a time, old friend,” Mara said. “Every parsec begins with a centimeter.”

Cilghal nodded and went off to gather some things from storage. Mara lay back, suddenly dizzy, wishing she felt half of the confidence she espoused.

TWENTY-THREE

Master Kae Kwaad was as lean as one of Nen Yim’s shaping fingers. He walked with an odd limp and a strange twist to his shoulders. His headdress was a ropy, unkempt mess. He wore a masquer to conceal his real face, a fashion among the Praetorite Vong but not common among shapers of any domain for decades. The masquer portrayed young, clear features, with scarlet-tinted yellow eyes. His real age was difficult to determine, though his skin had the smoothness of relative youth.

“Ah, my adept,” Kae said as Nen Yim made the genuflection of greeting. “My willing adept.”

Nen Yim tried to keep her expression neutral, but she heard something in his voice that suggested a leer behind his masquer. And the way his eyes traveled over her—what sort of master was this? Masters were above the carnal, beyond it.

No, she remembered. That was what was taught, but her old master Mezhan Kwaad’s downfall had had much to do with her forbidden affair with a warrior. Masters were supposed to be lustless. Supposing it did not make it so.

The master brought up the seven shaping fingers of his left hand and touched them to her chin. To her distraction, the fingers seemed cramped, or paralyzed. “Yes,” he murmured. “A very talented adept, I’m told.” He noticed her regarding his hand. “Ah,” he mused. “My hands are quite dead, you see. They died some years ago. I do not know why, and the other masters did not deign to replace them.”

“That is unfortunate, Master.”

He chucked her under the chin. “But you will be my hands, my dear—what was your name?”

“Nen Yim, Master.”

He nodded sagely. “Yim. Yim Yim Yim.” He clubbed his twisted, dead hands together. His eyes were open but seemed to see nothing. “Yim,” he concluded.

Yun-Yuuzhan, what part of you was he? she wondered, quills of disgust pricking up her spine.

“I do not like that name,” Kae Kwaad said in a sudden, angry burst. “It offends me.”

“It is my name, Master.”

“No.