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From a razor-sharp, needle-pointed arc above the distant horizon, a mind-bending river of color swelled overhead. Following it, Jacen craned his neck back, and back, and back: a titanic spectrum, cascades of azure and incarnadine, of argent and viridian braided into an impossibly complex, impossibly vivid rainbow that filled a third of the sky before narrowing again to another knifeedged curve that vanished into the purple sky above the opposite horizon.

Jacen knew what it was; more than a few worlds in the New Republic sported planetary rings. And he also knew that none of those worlds had rings like this one. This would have been famous, legendary; for this view alone, such a world would have been renowned throughout the galaxy as a tourist destination. And if it was this vivid—this huge—even now, when its color must be washed out by the light of day and the purple of the sky, what must it look like after dark? He could barely imagine.

Looking upon it, he felt he understood something about the Yuuzhan Vong that had always puzzled him before. It was not uncommon for primitive species on ringed worlds to mistake the rings in their sky for magical bridges built by gods; even for Jacen, who was well aware of the physics behind what he saw, the sight produced a faint shudder of sympathetic awe. He could imagine all too clearly being one of a species that had evolved under such a sight: to them, such a Bridge could only be the work of gods. It would be impossible to doubt the gods’ existence with the highway from their deific home to the world hanging forever overhead—so obviously magical, as well, that a creature could follow its curve all the way around the world and never reach either end. It would be only too easy to imagine gods patrolling their Bridge, looking down upon their creation.

With the gods so close at hand …

If the world is full of violence, savagery, and torture, this must be how they want it.

Lots of things about the Yuuzhan Vong made sense to him now.

“Magnificent, isn’t it?”

Vergere’s voice came from just behind his shoulder; though he hadn’t heard her approach, he was too lost in wonder and new comprehension to be startled. And he had known somehow already that she would be here. He had felt her shadow upon his thousand-year dream.

He had known, somehow, that she was still part of his life.

“You know,” Jacen murmured, still gazing up into the sky, “that’s exactly what you said when you brought me into the Nursery. Those same words. Just like that.”

“Truly?” Her wind-chime laughter tinkled around him. “You recall all that I say to you?”

“Every word,” Jacen answered grimly.

“Such a clever child. Is it any wonder that I love you so?”

Slowly, painfully, Jacen lowered himself to sit with his legs over the edge, his feet dangling free a kilometer above the rugged jungle canopy. “I guess I was pretty messed up. Pretty battered,” he said, laying one hand along the bandages that bound his sprung ribs in place. “You patched me up. You and those tears of yours.”

“Yes.”

He nodded: not thanks, just acknowledgment. “I didn’t expect to live through it.”

“Of course not. How could you, and achieve what you did?” she said kindly. “You found the power that arises of acting without hope … and also without fear. I was—I am—very proud of you.”

Jacen met her eyes. He could see his own reflection, dark and distorted, in their glossy black surface. “Proud? All the people up there who died because of me—”

“All the people down here who live because of you,” she countered, interrupting. She briefly told him how the shapers had been forced to give the dhuryam immediate control of the seedship, and how it had begun the breakup into individual shipseeds so quickly that there had been no time to round up the rampaging slaves. The dhuryam itself had used their slave seeds to herd them to safety, fulfilling its side of the bargain it had made with Jacen. “Yes, hundreds died in the battle—but thousands of slaves were able to ride