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“I suppose I am,” she replied. “But when you know the truth—”

“Truth is an entirely relative thing,” the Prophet said, stepping a little closer. “And sometimes not even that.” He reached toward his face.

“Why are you removing your masquer?”

“If this is the day of revelation, let us all stand before Zonama Sekot as we truly are. But you’ve interrupted me. I was speaking of truth. My truths, for instance, were all carefully crafted lies.”

His voice had harshened as the masquer unpeeled from his face. “What?” she asked. But then the masquer dropped away to reveal, not the face of a Shamed One, but the perfectly normal face of an executor, except that one of his eyes—

She gasped, and flung up her shaper’s hand. In an instant, the whip-sting hissed from her finger toward the face, but he was faster, much faster, bringing his arm up so that the sting drilled through it. He gasped, snarled, and quickly rotated his arm, wrapping the whip-sting around it so she could not withdraw for another strike.

Then he set his feet and yanked her toward him. She saw the pupil of his eye dilate impossibly wide, and then it spit at her.

Plaeryin bol, she had time to think, before the poison struck her.

Her muscles contracted instantly, and she felt her heartbeat roaring in her ears as she thudded to the ground in what seemed like slow motion. The sounds of the forest seemed, conversely, to rise in pitch, and she saw everything as through a distorted sheet of mica. Her body flopped until she was on her back, and she found the executor standing over her. She could no longer make out the features of his face.

“Know you …” she managed.

“I’m flattered,” he replied. “We met only once, I think.”

“Why?” Her lips were numb, the words torture to form, but she knew if she could keep him talking, the reagent implants in her body would manufacture an antidote to the toxin. She noticed he had released the sting from his arm.

“Why?” he repeated, moving away, apparently searching for something on the ground. “You don’t have long enough for me to explain it, my dear.”

“But Zonama Sekot. I … the answer.”

“I really couldn’t care less,” the false Prophet said. “You’ve gone mad, you and Harrar. Whatever future you would launch from here, I don’t think it would be one I care for. There is only so much a people can change before they lose themselves.”

“Already … lost.” She needed to make him understand. The Yuuzhan Vong had lost their way long before coming to this galaxy.

“I really don’t think that’s your judgment to make,” the Prophet said diffidently. She remembered his real name, suddenly. Nom Anor. “After I’m done with you,” he continued, “Zonama Sekot won’t be far behind. You see, you gave me access to your qahsa, and contrary to what you probably think, I am well able to understand its contents.”

“No. You’re mad.” She was feeling a little stronger. Sensation was returning to her extremities. She felt her whipsting, trailing on the ground, unretracted.

He reached down for something and picked it up. A rock.

“You’ll have to excuse me if I’m humble enough to doubt that a poison of my manufacture will kill you, Nen Yim. You truly are a genius. You are a terrible loss to our people.”

He came toward her, hefting the rock in one hand. Her heartbeat blurred into a steady vibration as with every bit of strength she had left she thrust her sting at him.

He swung the rock down, and something thundered, and one side of her head felt huge.

The second blow seemed softer. She saw again the rush of images that Zonama Sekot had shown her, the beauty of a world in harmony, a harmony so sublime that the Yuuzhan Vong had no word for it—though once they must have.

She saw the back of her own hand, the normal one, the one she had been born with. She was suddenly very young, back in the crèche, noticing it for the first time, fascinated that she could make the little things on it move.

Does Tahiri remember this, too? she wondered.

She wiggled the fingers, trying to guess how they worked. She could not seem to move them very much.

Nom Anor