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Jacen smiled lightly. “If I knew, we’d have the answer to ending the war.”

THIRTY-TWO

“Look at you—cowering like a herd of yanskacs!” the Supreme Overlord railed at the elite from his spike-backed throne in the Citadel’s Hall of Confluence. “On the eve of victory you allow yourselves to be frightened by an illusion—a piece of celestial chicanery!”

Even while cringing with the rest of them, Nom Anor had to give Shimrra credit. Despite the tremors that continued to rock Yuuzhan’tar, and the dangerous innuendoes that threatened to undermine his divine right to rule, the Supreme Overlord refused to be intimidated—if not entirely unmoved. With his long arms jerking about and his legs quivering, he looked like a puppet in a shadow play. Some said that his implanted eyes, too, were rarely still, and were constantly shifting color.

Shimrra raised the Scepter of Power toward the hall’s ribbed ceiling. “Some of you are whispering that the bright light that rises at sunset is an omen of doom—a living world rumored to have been encountered during the rule of my predecessor, whose name I will not deign to mention. I am not unacquainted with this rumor. Following my ascension to the throne I dispatched forces to search out this world—this Zonama Sekot—only to be informed that it was not to be found. So I asked myself: had it disappeared? Had Zonama Sekot been destroyed? Or was it nothing more than a lie perpetrated by my predecessor in an attempt to keep us from conquering and occupying what was by gods-given right our entitled domain?”

While Shimrra paused, Onimi circulated among the audience, baiting members of the elite to respond. Much to the displeasure of High Prefect Drathul, Nom Anor had conveyed Shimrra’s orders to the priests of the temples, enjoining them to devote their attention to Yun-Harla rather than Yun-Yuuzhan or Yun-Yammka. As a result, the royal seers were beside themselves with apprehension—expecting deception and manipulation of the worst sort—and the elite were wondering whether Shimrra’s actions had been undertaken for the benefit of the Yuuzhan Vong or for Shimrra himself.

“I will reveal the truth of it,” the Supreme Overlord said at last. “The bright light is not a trick of the eye. It is in fact the same living world!”

The audience was stunned into even more profound silence, especially Drathul and his coterie of Quoreal supporters. But the pronouncement was every bit as staggering to Nom Anor.

Coming clean was the last thing he had expected Shimrra to do.

“How could the gods allow this? you ask yourselves,” Shimrra went on in a tone of theatrical melancholy. “How, after all we have done to provide them with sacrifices and converts, after all we have done to cleanse this galaxy of infidels and heretics, could the gods turn on us? Again, I will supply the answer: this ill-omened world has been placed in the hands of our enemy as a final test of our worthiness to reign over them—a final test to gauge the strength of the Yuuzhan Vong heart!”

Shimrra pounded the floor with his amphistaff in a demand for silence.

“And yet what a daunting test they have set before us. A weak-minded person—a dissenter or a skeptic—might be tempted to believe that the gods have abandoned us, and that there is no possible way for us to succeed. I have thought long and hard about this. I have prayed, and I have ventured beyond contemplation and entreaty to look deep into our history for answers. And the gods have rewarded my search.”

Shimrra paused again, while a tremor rumbled the Citadel. Then he pointed the scepter to Qelah Kwaad and her adepts.

“The shapers know what I’m referring to when I speak of the eighth cortex. But for you commanders and intendants—even for some of you priests—I will explain. A cortex contains the protocols for shapings—the protocols that originally guided the hands of our ancestors in creating dovin basals and villips, coralskippers and yammosks. It is not a place but a state of mind. And as one approaches the superlative cortex—the eighth cortex