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He had lately begun to have his suspicions about Shimrra. Not voiced ones, certainly, but suspicions nonetheless. And today—which had already brought so many interesting new thoughts—brought another.

Nen Yim did not know, perhaps, how much Harrar knew about shapers and their protocols. He was the first to admit that he did not know everything. But one thing was clear—Nen Yim operated outside the realm of normal shaping, and the heresy of the Shamed Ones was not the only heresy around. Mezhan Kwaad, Nen Yim’s late master, had been a heretic, and had died for it.

And here was Nen Yim, alive, favored by the Supreme Overlord, and perhaps practicing her own heresy in guarded secrecy.

If true, it could mean only one thing: Shimrra himself was a heretic. And that—like everything else in this situation—had the potential to change everything.

If things went as planned, he might manage to kill three targets with a single thud bug.

He rose, and smelled the air, and felt destiny in his veins.

EIGHT

Nom Anor turned the message this way and that in his mind, and saw it sharp in every angle. It was hard to wrap his thoughts around it without feeling the cut, so pregnant with the possibility of betrayal it seemed.

“Who sent you, Loiin Sool?” he asked the messenger, softly. The messenger was a Shamed One, his shoulders and face a mass of poorly healed scar tissue. His eyes were concealed by a constricted uruun cloth, placed there before he’d begun his descent into the dark, dank places of Nom Anor’s domain. The domain of the Prophet.

A wave of his hand, and Loiin Sool would never see anything again.

“I come on behalf of the shaper Nen Yim,” Sool answered. “I know little more than that. I was taken from my work detail, given the message, and sent to find you.”

Nom Anor nodded. Sool had been checked for implants, of course, though no test short of thorough dissection was certain. Was someone looking at him now, from some hidden pore in the messenger’s skin?

If so, they saw not Nom Anor but the Prophet Yu’shaa, his face hidden behind a grotesque ooglith masquer that showed only one spectacularly Shamed, eyes festering with inflammation and lesions rendering the visage almost unrecognizable as Yuuzhan Vong in origin.

His surroundings would tell them little more. Yuuzhan’tar was a warren of rusting holes like this one.

“Why does the shaper not come to me herself?”

“She may not leave Lord Shimrra’s compound, I am told. She takes great risk even in sending this message.”

That was undoubtedly true. What little Nom Anor knew of Nen Yim suggested that her role was one that Shimrra was not eager to have widely known. He had lent her for a time to Tsavong Lah, but since her return from that liaison, she had been little seen or heard from. Indeed, Nom Anor had wondered if she had been quietly disposed of.

And perhaps she had. There was no knowing whether this message actually came from her. Since he’d lost Ngaaluh, his spy in Shimrra’s court, much was uncertain.

“Why does she seek me out?” Nom Anor asked.

“She heard of your prophecy of the new world. Her studies lead her to believe it is a true one. She desires to see this world for herself.”

“So you have already said. Why does she seek my aid?”

“Who else could give it? Shimrra and his minions are corrupt. They have done everything they can to deny the existence of our redeemer. He and the elite will do much more, because they know that if the truth is known, they will be seen as the false leaders they are. And you, my lord, will be seen as the true Prophet.”

“What does a shaper care for that?” Nom Anor wondered aloud.

“Nen Yim seeks only truth,” Sool said.

“You’ve already told me you do not know her,” Nom Anor pointed out. “How can you speak for her or pretend to understand her motivations?”

“This is the message, Prophet,” Sool answered. “I only repeat it.”

A vague chanting had gone up among Nom Anor’s acolytes. He began to wish he had received Sool in private rather than in front of thirty or so followers.

A