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But Chewbacca is not there.

Neither is Anakin.

The four warriors stop just beyond the fringe of the grove. Juvenile amphistaffs whip the air threateningly, and the polyps’ groundmouths gape wide, mutely anticipating a rain of blood and flesh. One warrior calls out in harsh, guttural Basic: “Jeedai-slave, come out!”

Jacen’s only response is to open his eyes.

“Jeedai-slave! Come out from there!” They wear no armor; the only vonduun crabs within reach are the wild ones that infest the bog beyond the coraltree basal, coming out at night to feed on the polyps at the edges of the grove. Unarmored warriors could not survive even seconds within the hissing swirl of juvenile amphistaffs.

Jacen adjusts his stance, organizing his thoughts and his breathing into a Jedi meditation that reaches deep within himself, beyond the searing pain from the slave seed, into memories of what he has learned through his mental link with the dhuryam: memories so vivid they are like a waking dream.

Now the fully armed warriors who guard the shreeyam’tiz are taking notice. Some begin to move deliberately toward the amphistaff grove, and the warriors who ring the hive-pond shift uneasily and adjust their weapons.

“Jeedai-slave! If we must come in, it will go worse for you!”

Jacen is deep in the meditation now; he can feel the thrum of emotive hormones through the rudimentary brains of the amphistaff polyps around him. He can taste their blood hunger like a mouthful of raw meat.

The warrior turns and barks a command in the tongue of the Yuuzhan Vong. Two more false slaves step away from a coraltree basal and allow their ooglith masquers to slither down their legs. The newly revealed warriors grab a real slave; one holds him while the other crushes the slave’s throat with a knife-hand strike. They step back and let the slave fall, watching dispassionately while he writhes in the dirt, choking to death.

“Jeedai-slave! Come out, or another will die. Then another, and another, until finally only you are left. Save their lives, Jeedai. Come out!”

Now Jacen’s waking meditation dream interpenetrates with the memory of another dream, a real dream, a Force dream so vivid he can still smell the coralskipper buds, can still see the scarified faces of the warrior guards and the coral-maimed bodies of the slaves: a dream he had two years ago, on Belkadan.

A dream in which he freed slaves of the Yuuzhan Vong.

How astonished he felt, how bereft, when that dream did not come true. When his attempt to fulfill its promise ended in disaster, in blood and death and torture, he felt as though the Force itself had betrayed him.

Now he sees that he had not been betrayed. He’d merely been impatient.

“Jeedai-slave! Come out!”

Jacen sighs, and surfaces from the meditation.

“All right,” he says quietly, a little sadly. “If you insist.”

His still shadow becomes a shade in motion, drifting noiselessly through the grove of blood-hungry polyps. He stops at the penumbra bordering the blue-white noon beyond. The amphistaffs whirl lethal halos at his back. “Here I am.”

“Farther,” the warrior commands. “Move beyond the reach of the grove.”

Jacen opens his empty hands. “Make me.”

The warrior turns his head fractionally toward his companions. “Kill another.”

“You,” Jacen says, “are no warrior.”

The warrior’s three companions jabber excitedly among themselves. The leader’s head snaps around as though yanked by a tractor beam. “What?”

“Warriors win battles without murdering the weak.” Jacen’s voice drips acid contempt. “Like all Yuuzhan Vong, you make war only upon the helpless. You are a coward from a species of cowards.”

The warrior stalks forward. His eyes glitter a crazed, feral yellow. “You call me coward? You? You simpering Jeedai brat? You shivering brenzlit, cowering in the shadow of your den? You slave?”

“This Jeedai brenzlit slave,” Jacen says distinctly, clinically, “spits upon your grandfather’s bones.”

The warrior lunges, taloned fingers reaching to tear the eyes from Jacen’s face. With an exhausted