Free The Final Prophecy by Greg Keyes Page A

there—that it had something to do with their training.”
    Han raised an eyebrow. “That’s interesting. How exactly would they know that?”
    “That’s not hard,” Leia said. “The Yuuzhan Vong have been obsessed with the Jedi from the very beginning. We know they have good intelligence. Anyway, the story about Luke meeting Yoda there isn’t exactly a well-kept secret.”
    “But they were mistaken,” Tahiri said. “Dagobah isn’t the world the Shamed Ones are looking for.”
    Han had the same expression on his face he usually wore playing sabacc. “Oh? And what world do you think they
are
looking for?”
    “The same one Master Skywalker was looking for. And found. Zonama Sekot.”
    Han’s eyes widened slightly. Then he puffed and raised his hands in a gesture of frustration.
    “Leia,” he said. “You tell her.”
    “Tell me what?”
    Leia pursed her lips. “Kenth Hamner contacted us while you were asleep, on a heavily coded channel. He wants to talk to you.”
    Kenth Hamner
. “The liaison between the Jedi and military?” She couldn’t quite picture his face. She seemed to remember it was long.
    “Right.”
    “Did he say what it was about?”
    “Not exactly,” Leia said cautiously. “But it involvesZonama Sekot—and a dissident movement within the Yuuzhan Vong.”
    Han looked at her earnestly. “Tahiri, whatever it is, you don’t have to do it.”
    “Of course I do,” Tahiri said. “I promised the Shamed One—”
    “You promised him you would tell his Prophet about Dagobah,” Han interrupted. “You made no promises concerning Zonama Sekot.”
    Tahiri smiled slightly. “My promise was one of
izai
, not one of strict legality.”
    “What?”
    “
Izai
is the essence of a promise. The Shamed One thought he had found the planet foretold. I promised him that I would take this news back to his Prophet. But Dagobah
isn’t
the planet foretold. Therefore, the
izai
—the essence of my promise—requires me to carry the news that the planet of prophecy has been found.”
    Han pushed his palms into his face. “This is making my head hurt,” he said.
    “I think I need to speak to Kenth Hamner,” Tahiri said firmly.
    “We’re already on the way there,” Han grunted. “But I hope you know what you’re doing.”
    “I do.”
    “No,” Han said, a little angrily, “you
think
you know what you’re doing. It’s a conceit born out of being young. Jaina thinks she knows what she’s doing. Anakin thought he knew what he was doing.”
    “Anakin
did
know what he was doing,” Tahiri said, softly. “If he hadn’t done it, there might not be a single Jedi alive today. I know I wouldn’t be here. Didn’t you know what you were doing when you came back to save Master Skywalker at the Death Star all those years ago?”
    “I was older than you,” Han said, rising from the table.He got up and went toward the cockpit. But he stopped and turned, with one hand on the hatch.
    “And, to answer your question,” he said, “no, I didn’t have the faintest idea what I was doing.” He chuckled briefly, shook his head, and vanished into the corridor.
    Kenth Hamner did indeed have a long face. He also had a firm handshake, and an office so spare it might have been a storeroom. The view was interesting, though. His window looked down upon a landscape of bloodred and black swirled together, laced over with silver coils and meanders of tide creeks and pools. Beyond that, jagged black mountains sawed at a sky the same metallic color as the water.
    Land was scarce on Mon Calamari, but often dramatic.
    “Salts,” Hamner said, noticing her interest. “When this island was forming, there was a lot of volcanic activity—and geysers the size of volcanoes. Those deposits are millions of years old.”
    Tahiri nodded, preoccupied. What would the old Tahiri have thought of this view? Or Riina? She found it beautiful, but where did beauty come from? Not from the Force, because the Yuuzhan Vong didn’t know the