The Final Prophecy by Greg Keyes Page B

warrior’s eyes widened. “One-who-was-shaped!” Then his eyes switched back to Corran, and he returned to Basic. “The slayer of Shedao Shai! We expected
Jeedai
, but not the most august of them.”
    “Ah, there are still a few higher on the ladder than us,” Corran said. “Luke Skywalker, for instance.”
    “But he does not figure in our sacred tales!”
    Tahiri was in no mood to let the warrior become distracted. “I asked you a question,” she snapped.
    The warrior bowed his head. “I was a coward,” he said.
    A cowardly warrior
? Tahiri thought.
No wonder
.
    “You seem to have some courage,” Corran said. “You came down here, not knowing if you would find us or an ambush.”
    “I serve the Truth now. It gives me courage, though I am still unworthy.”
    “And yet the most worthy of my disciples,” a new voice said.
    Tahiri glanced up. A tall figure had just come into the chamber. His face was a mass of unhealed scars and festering sores, his right ear missing. The sacks below his eyes were distended, yellow, and—
    No, something was wrong. She looked more closely.
    It’s not real
, she realized.
He’s wearing a masquer
.
    “You’re Yu’shaa?” Corran asked.
    “I am. It is my honor to meet the great Tahiri Veila and Corran Horn.”
    Tahiri acknowledged that greeting with a curt nod.
    The Prophet bowed. “This is truly a blessed day,” he said.
    “Right,” Corran said. “Though for a blessed day, we’ve had some fairly unblessed setbacks. Including the fact that our ship was destroyed in coming here.”
    “You were discovered?” the Prophet asked, a bit sharply.
    “No. At least I don’t think so.” Tahiri watched him carefully while Corran described what had happened.
    The Prophet nodded when he finished. “You are correct, Blessed One—it is unlikely that you were discovered. I suspect your firing of the plasma weapon caused some sort of malfunction in the maw luur’s reflexes. There are hundreds, if not thousands of such malfunctions every day, and I doubt this one will be closely scrutinized. As to the other, oncemore we see that the universe favors our cause. The final member of our party claims to have a ship at her disposal.”
    “
Final
member of the party?” Corran made it sound like,
You want me to kiss a gundark
?
    “Yes. A shaper who holds the secret to our redemption.”
    “I thought
you—
”
    “I am the Prophet. I speak the truth and foretell what is to come. I am not myself the key to redemption—I merely
see
it.”
    Corran glanced at Tahiri. “That’s interesting,” he said, “but our mission, as I understood it, was to come here and get you and take you to Zonama Sekot. Now you want us to change the mission to include someone else. In my experience, changes in the mission can lead to unpleasant results.”
    “I
am
sorry,” the Prophet said. “But as you said, your mission has changed already—now we must have a ship. As to the shaper—I could not speak of her on the qahsa. She is placed very close to Shimrra—it is how she discovered Zonama Sekot in the first place.”
    Corran sighed. “Explain.”
    “A commander named Ekh’m Val went to Zonama Sekot,” Yu’shaa said. “He fought there and was defeated. But he returned with something of the planet, which this shaper has studied. She discovered a certain inexplicable kinship between the biology of Sekot and our own biotechnology.”
    “Again, interesting, but—”
    “We are from another galaxy, Jedi Horn. We crossed the starless night for age upon age. Our legends go deep, and yet nowhere is such a thing hinted at, at least not in anything I ever heard. And yet here, in this time of darkness, two things are given us. To me, a vision of Zonama Sekot as a sign of our redemption. To the shaper, the revelation that we have some prior relationship to this planet—a relationship that Shimrra fears. I do not know what these things mean, but they can hardly be coincidence. But like me, thisshaper