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“Could this be another of Sekot’s tests?” Mara wondered while they walked.

“I don’t think so,” Luke said. “Unless Sekot is testing itself.”

“Stop there,” the voice of Sekot said, speaking through a suddenly transfixed Jabitha. “Who walks with you, Jedi Master? Two I recognize, but the third …”

“He is called Harrar,” Luke said, not to Jabitha but to the tunnel itself. “He came to Zonama in the company of the one who sabotaged you.”

Jabitha turned to Harrar. “How is it I seem to know this one? My memories go back billions of turnings, and this one carries a message to me of distant times and distant events.”

“Harrar is of the people you know as the Far Outsiders,” Luke said. “The Yuuzhan Vong, who tried to conquer Zonama, shortly before the arrival of Vergere.”

Jabitha shook her head. “Those times are not distant, Jedi Master. But why can’t I perceive him? Not as I do the children of the Firsts; not nearly as I do the Jedi.… Yes, I recall having the same experience with the Far Outsiders—they seemed to exist outside the Force.”

“No, Sekot,” Luke said. “Even though you can’t perceive Harrar, he exists within the Force.”

Jacen’s right hand went to his chest, as if to touch the scar left from the piece of slave coral Vergere had implanted in him. He swung to Harrar. “Why did the Yuuzhan Vong leave their home galaxy?”

Harrar firmed his scarred lips, then said, “Some have interpreted the ancient texts to suggest that we were … banished.”

“For what reason?” Jacen persisted.

“Our infatuation with war and conquest. Some interpret our long journey as an attempt to win back the favor of the gods.”

Jacen thought about it. “Your ancestors were banished because they turned to war. They did the opposite of what was expected of them. Did … the gods banish you from the Force?”

When Harrar lifted his head, his face was a mask of fearful confusion. “There is nothing in our legends about the Force.”

“But even you compared the Force to your gods,” Mara said.

Luke took Harrar by the shoulders, as if to shake him, but only eased him to his feet. “A power—call it the gods if you have to—may have separated you from the original symbiosis. Your people experienced intolerable pain, and pain has been the only way back to that symbiosis.”

Harrar nearly collapsed in Luke’s grip. “Separated from the symbiosis. From our primordial homeworld …”

Luke dropped his hands to his sides and turned in astonishment to Jabitha, as if waiting for Sekot to confirm what he was thinking.

“I now understand,” Sekot said finally. “This one—his people—has been stripped of the Force.”

SIXTEEN

There hadn’t been a ceremony to equal it in untold generations. As vast as the worldships were—and notwithstanding the views of distant stars and even more distant galaxies—they weren’t large enough to contain the magnificence of high ritual. Compared to Yuuzhan’tar’s Place of Sacrifice, the worldships were mere theaters.

And yet, for all the grandeur and spectacle, Nom Anor was too consumed by apprehension to appreciate a moment of it. He marched in step with the procession, but the expression on his face would have been better suited to someone on his way to be executed.

Located midway between Shimrra’s Citadel and the skull-shaped bunker that housed the Well of the World Brain, the Place of Sacrifice was dominated by a hundred-meter-high truncated cone of yorik coral, helixed with carved stairways and honeycombed with passageways that served to channel blood into fonts and other basins. On the flattened top the priests performed their rituals, and encircling the base were the yawning pits of the corpse-disposing maw luur. To one side of the spire sprawled a grouping of temples, oriented to the sacred directions; and to the other, a repository, in which were stored the holy relics Shimrra’s worldship had conveyed across the dim reaches of intergalactic space.

Constructed in accordance with the hallowed texts, and in homage to the ancestral architecture,