Perhaps a little heresy would bring another note of constancy to his life. And after all these many years as a priest, it might be a great relief to be able to believe in something. –Dark Journey
A/N: Just finished the long undertaking that is an New Jedi Order re-read, and felt that this meeting was disappointingly absent in The Unifying Force. Harrar finally meets his Trickster face-to-face.
A Note of Constancy
When the newcomers to Zonama Sekot were bidden to follow their Ferroan guides to the shelters, Harrar found himself wandering the twisting trails of the tampasi and contemplating the informal, introductory council just concluded in the landing field.
Contemplating the past five months.
Contemplating the past five years.
Contemplating the past five decades.
For what might have occurred, had Quoreal proven the victor in Shimrra's coup attempt? Had word of Zonama Sekot's existence become readily known among the elite?
Perhaps Quoreal's caution would have won- and in so doing, consigned his people to a cold and humiliating death in the void. For all of Shimrra's failings, for his heresies, he at least had understood that the life of the Yuuzhan Vong was inexorably tied to this galaxy. How different might that life had been, though.
Heresies. Harrar chuckled inwardly. His thoughts still spoke the word against Shimrra disparagingly, yet he had become the greatest heretic of them all. The greatest traitor. For what choice did he have, when confronted with the truth of this world? Of this Force? What choice, for the salvation of his people?
The warriors may well be lost, but absent Shimrra, the priests and intendants could be persuaded to see reason, to sue for peace. The Shamed Ones had long ago seen merit in the Jedi, looked to them for their redemption. Even given voice by one so scheming and self-serving as Nom Anor, the prophetic truths of their ideas bore a certain cruel irony, when he reflected on what the Yuuzhan Vong ought have been; what they once were, living in symbiosis on a world such as this.
What fate had befallen the lost Yuuzhan'tar? Stripped of the Force, of their symbiotic attunement to their primordial homeworld, had his forebears turned on her? Lashed out in their pain? Written off spitefully the existence of any other living worlds as ill-omen, an omen ignored by Shimrra and destined to be his downfall, even while offering a scant hope to the rest of his people?
So lost in his musings was he, that Harrar barely heard the footsteps until they were upon him; a light tread, betrayed by the crack of fallen twigs, the shuffle of foliage blown free and dropped to the tampasi floor during the storms of the Crossing. He stilled but did not turn, mentally preparing himself for the confrontation.
"It has always been held true by her servants," he murmured softly, knew she would pick up the words in the quiet stillness among the boras, "that the Trickster reserves her greatest guiles for her most devoted.
"Of course," he turned and found her discerning gaze watching him impassively, "become the consummate heretic, I recognize that more likely, Yun-Harla is simply an aspect of your Force that promises the unexpected, the ironic. Still- I daresay my heresy first took form during the long months of our battle of wits." Her expression did not change, but she looked off into the tampasi quietly. "I did not know if you would recognize me."
That drew her attention sharply back, and a light quirk of her mouth betrayed some unintended humor found in his words, though true amusement seemed absent the expression. "You know, Harrar… I've been in and out of fighter squadrons for the past five years, flown in more battles than I care to count, lost more comrades than I can bear name… and in that sort of environment…" she trailed off and looked him over, seemed to be cataloguing his markings. "Well," she scoffed, "in my culture… people take the edge off how they can. They gamble. They drink. They flirt. And in five years flying with fighter pilots who are convinced that every engagement is going to be their last, I can assuredly say that no proposition holds a candle to It will be my honor to preside over your sacrifice."
He stood quietly and met her stare evenly until she broke it with a light huff and settled herself on the ground in a relatively clear space on the trail. They were alone- the local Ferroans seeing to the settling of their new visitors, the rest of them reacquainting with friends and family not seen in many klekkets.
Intrigued as to her purpose in pursuing him, he settled slowly on the ground opposite her, mirroring her cross-legged posture with considerably less grace brought on by his substantially larger size and older age. "I see you bear your Jeedai weapon," he nodded to the lightsaber clipped to her belt.
"If you hadn't noticed, there's a war on."
"Not on Zonama Sekot," he rebuked gently, and a flash of curiosity lit her face.
"Not yet, anyway," she murmured.
When she again fell into a contemplative silence that began to stretch on, he spoke haltingly. "When Tahiri discovered me and presented me before Master Skywalker, I inquired if he intended to sacrifice me to the Force." Another bout of amusement pulled her lips, but he continued. "I intend to do all in my power to assist in ending this war, but if there is any other with right to lay claim to my life, after so repeatedly besting me – humiliating me – in battle, it is you, Jaina Solo."
Her coarse laughter cut the still air, and he fought down his anger at her caustic rejection of his attempts to put his honor right again. But that was the Yuuzhan Vong side speaking – the side of one who had grown alongside the eventual warmaster, had sworn fealty to him, fought alongside him and on his behalf, despite his allegiance to the priestly caste. A warmaster slain by the very young woman sitting before him, if the rumors of Ebaq 9 were to be believed.
The heretic side already knew what she was going to say.
"That, Harrar, is why your people and mine will never understand one another. What good are you to anybody dead?"
A dry smile curled his lip. "Your uncle rejected the idea with a shade more subtlety, but you are correct. I possess a great deal of knowledge of Shimrra's court, the workings of the elites, and Coruscant."
"Not Yuuzhan'tar?"
He hesitated, unsure when he had mentally reverted to the original name for the occupied capital. "Zonama Sekot has presented me many truths- some astonishing, some terrible, all of them profound. And perhaps none greater than the utter futility to be found in trying to remake a world into even a shadow of the splendor that surrounds us."
She seemed to accept that without critique, though her expression turned to bitterness. He at first thought it to be on behalf of the planet of which they spoke, but she turned her attention back to the idea that he might serve as a sacrifice. "You are all so very concerned with how honorably you die, you forget how to live honorably. Or perhaps you, Harrar, simply desire to be freed from the burden of betraying your entire people, in order to save them."
He hadn't considered that, but catalogued it in the back of his mind so that he might mull the idea over later.
"Your disparate cultures almost universally honor their fallen warriors," he reminded her.
"But they see no dishonor in surviving and dying of old age," she shot back. "Ten thousand Yuuzhan Vong warriors died on Ebaq 9 in pursuit of one decimated squadron and its three Jedi pilots. Did they die honorably, led by their warmaster, because they were in pursuit of what he deemed a target valuable enough to merit such a force? Or did they die pointlessly, ignominiously, choking on vacuum because that warmaster allowed himself to be deceived one, final, fatal time by a creature who had proven time and again that she was not to be trusted?"
"Tsavong Lah's final decisions have not gone without a certain degree of ridicule." She shrugged and stared off sullenly; he wondered at her sulking countenance, so very juvenile in so accomplished a warrior. "I shan't waste your time or mine with useless platitudes concerning the toll this long war has exacted. But I do regret the deceptions, the failures in the recounting of our history that, if better understood, may have prevented it all."
Her eyes bored into his for a long minute; trying to read him visually, he supposed, in the absence of the Force. "I should go," she said at last, rising quickly to her feet. "My dad's still trying to wrap his mind around the idea of a defector, his credulity will need a wide berth from the knowledge that you personally spent months pursuing me from Myrkr to Hapes to Borleais."
"And yours, Jaina Solo?"
"I trust Master Skywalker," she frowned. "And Jacen, Corran, Tahiri- they've all vouched for your sincerity." She turned and walked three steps before whirling back around and peering down at him, still sitting on the ground, through keen, narrowed eyes. "Harrar, high-priest of the Deception Sect- did you never wonder whether this wasn't simply an elaborate ruse? The greatest test of all?"
He wasn't sure specifically to what she referred- Zonama Sekot, the Force, Jaina herself, the once supposed avatar of Yun-Harla.
"But of course," he answered anyway, for the ideas were elaborately intertwined. "It is a heavy burden, the presumption that I alone, save the late Nem Yim, might have discovered the truth of my people. Might be in a position to affect the fates of us all."
"Hm." She mulled that over for another minute and then turned away once more. "You're doing a good thing here, Harrar," she called over her shoulder, even as her voice faded away with her footsteps. "Don't screw it up."
His murmured response was only for the benefit of the surrounding boras. "I remain, as ever," he intoned wryly, climbing to his feet, "your servant, Great One."
The Force no more allowed for the possibility that Jaina Solo was a goddess than did the True Way. Still…
As he reflected on the circles run around his taskforce by the diminutive departing figure, the rising new order, he thought, had room for a little bit of heresy.
X-X