Twist of Faith

by S. D. Perry

  She closed her eyes for a moment, silently reciting a prayer of thanks for all of the gifts They gave, and opened the ark, the beautiful light of the Prophets filling the room, the room disappearing until there was only Their will, Their strength.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Yevir had stayed in his quarters since returning from the aborted evacuation. He wouldn’t be able to get a shuttle seat for another day—departures to Bajor had been cut in half because of the fuel shortages—so he spent a fair amount of time doing what he could to manage the situation from the station.

  He spoke with Vedeks Eran and Frith, who had already called for a full Assembly meeting, to discuss how best to handle the crisis. Over the next few days, Eran said, they expected hundreds of vedeks to travel to the Assembly hall, to collaborate on an official assertion of denouncement. The book of lies had already been publicly condemned by the Assembly, of course, but it would take more than a simple statement to silence the public outcry. Yevir wondered how long it would be before the first Ohalu cults sprang up, growing from the disease like poisonous flowers.

  And all because of Kira Nerys.

  The thought of Nerys’s incredible, terrible act had made sleep impossible, and prayer nearly so. Yevir had spent much of the night pacing his rooms, unable to concentrate on his love for the Prophets, to find solace in Their embrace. He tried to console himself with thoughts of petitioning to take her command away, perhaps even finding a way to force her to leave Bajor, but it didn’t help him find peace. The damage had been done, out of blindness or malice, he couldn’t be sure, but he knew that guiding Bajor through the resulting spiritual chaos might very well take years.

  Which was why, when the companel in his room chimed, the last person he expected it to be was Kira Nerys, speaking without a trace of apology, not even a hint of shame. If he needed any more proof that there was something wrong with her, the obvious self-satisfaction in her voice was it.

  “Vedek Yevir, would you come to runabout pad C, as soon as possible? You might want to bring your things with you, too. We’re going to Bajor.”

  She commed off before he could ask any questions.

  Yevir considered ignoring her request, but returning to Bajor as quickly as possible was in the best interests of the people…and to be truthful with himself, he was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to find forgiveness for Kira.

  When he’d turned his life over to the Prophets, he’d let go of anger and prejudice and malignity, leaving behind those things that separated him from Their light. He knew he was only mortal, but Their Touch, through the Emissary, had relieved him of pessimism and negativity. His heart had been opened to greater things…

  …but how do I forgive such a staggering disdain for faith, for the Prophets themselves?

  He didn’t know. What he did know was that he didn’t want to wait another day to return home; the Assembly needed him, they needed a strong hand to lead, so that they could lead others. He quickly gathered his things and headed for the bay, wondering why Kira wanted to go to Bajor. She’d already created havoc enough, even insulting the Emissary’s wife with her blasphemous designs…

  …which was why he was surprised when he stepped into the runabout airlock and saw Kasidy Yates standing with Kira, near the runabout Euphrates. Ro Laren was also there, just inside the ship’s entrance.

  “Ready to go,” Ro said.

  Yevir slowly walked toward them, not sure what to expect—and saw that Kasidy and Ro both wore similar expressions of uncertainty. Only Kira seemed to understand what was happening, and as he drew closer, he was shocked to see the light that emanated from her, the blazing eyes and tranquil demeanor of one who has recently been with the Prophets.

  How can that be? It didn’t seem possible, but the effects of an Orb experience or vision were unmistakable. Her pagh radiated both strength and placidity, her gaze on fire with comprehension.

  When he reached the trio of women, Kira smiled at him. “I’m glad you decided to join us, Linjarin.”

  “What’s this about?” he asked curtly, not at all sure he liked what he was seeing. How could They speak to her, after what she’d done?

  The Prophets are wise in all things, he hastily amended. It wasn’t for him to question.

  “Funny you should ask,” Kira said, still smiling. “Because I’m not really sure myself. We’re going to B’hala, I know that much…and I believe I’ll know what to do when we get there.”

  Yevir nodded, knowing that sometimes it was like that, still not quite understanding why They’d chosen her—and he realized that his concerns about finding forgiveness for Kira Nerys weren’t about his capacity for that forgiveness…they were about his desire. Prophets help him, he didn’t want to see her absolved, because she didn’t deserve it.

  “Shall we?” Kira asked, lit from within by awareness.

  Ro and Kasidy turned and walked to the open hatch, and clutching his bag, Yevir reluctantly followed.

  After the strained and silent journey to Bajor—except for Colonel Kira, who was perfectly content to sit smiling to herself—Ro was more than ready to get off the runabout. Yevir had been relentlessly moody, stalking around the Euphrates like a troubled child, pausing occasionally to gaze at Captain Yates with adoring eyes. Yates had ignored him entirely, only holding herself and exuding a kind of soft sadness. Ro normally didn’t mind avoiding conversation, but the atmosphere had been strangely tiring, and when they finally arrived, she was the first one on the transporter pad.

  When they materialized at B’hala, in a clear-front office near the top of the city, Ro was amazed at just how huge the dig actually was—before them stretched a vast pit, filled with levels and layers of unearthed ruins, those at the very bottom so far away that it felt like they were standing in front of an optical illusion.

  I had no idea it was so…beautiful. Religious significance aside, the crumbling city was magnificent to behold, speaking to the longevity and tenacity of Bajoran culture. The afternoon sun spread across the city in long shadows, dappling all of it in lovely, random patterns of light.

  While Kira spent a few minutes talking with someone who worked at Site Extension, whatever that was, Ro gazed down at the ancient buildings and spires, her hands pressed to the cool window. Yates and Yevir stood on either side of her, also looking down, expressionless. Ro wasn’t sure exactly what Kira was planning, but decided she was glad she’d come along, if only to have seen such an eternal and glorious thing in her lifetime.

  When Kira rejoined them, she carried four light sticks and a small rock hammer. She seemed to have come down a little from whatever Orb high she’d been on, but she was still glowing too much for Yevir’s taste, Ro could see it in the set of his jaw.

  “What now?” Yates asked quietly, as Kira passed out the lights.

  “Now we transport to where the book was found,” Kira said.

  “Why?” Yevir asked, still endeavoring to wear his pious serenity like some kind of armor. “And why the hammer? B’hala is sacred ground, it’s not open to anyone who feels like participating in the dig.”

  Kira smiled, shrugging. “I still don’t know why, exactly. All I know is that there’s an answer here, close to where Reyla found the book.”

  Kira gave the coordinates to the young ranjen who was operating the transporter, clicking on her light stick as they returned to the pad. Ro did the same—

  —and was glad she had, when they materialized in a small, dark place a second later, underground cold, the air suffused with the smell of age and dust.

  As Kas and Yevir turned on their lights, Ro saw that they were in a small room, empty except for a long, low shelf made of stone, a few broken clay pots—and an open space at the base of the far wall, where someone had recently been excavating.

  “That’s where she found it,” Kira said, her voice hollow in the empty air. Yevir actually shuddered before turning away.

  “Come this way,” Kira said, walking to the uneven arch that marked the entran
ce to the room. There was a corridor past the arch, obviously newly unearthed, great piles of dusty, untouched stones randomly strewn throughout.

  They walked in a line behind her, Ro bringing up the rear, nervously wondering how far down they were and where Kira was leading them. The darkness was oppressive, swallowing the light, a total blackness reclaiming the ground as they walked on. For some reason, Ro felt very small, as though they were a line of tiny insects crawling through a universe of tunnel.

  Finally, the meandering corridor stopped, a dead end of fragile-looking stackstone, the slaty layers eroded by tens of thousands of years. Kira stopped, turning to face them. Her face was eerily lit by the glow of the sticks, her eyes like dark holes.

  “Here,” she said, almost in a whisper, handing her light stick to Ro. “This is as far as they’ve dug down; we’re at the very bottom of B’hala’s very lowest level. The farthest from the city’s center, too.”

  “Do you know why yet?” Yates asked, also keeping her voice low. It somehow seemed obligatory, not to speak too loud in such a deep, dark place.

  “I think so,” Kira said. “It’s about you, Kas. And about the book, and your baby.”

  Without another word, Kira turned and struck the face of the dead-end wall with the rock hammer, the chink of the stone being hit somehow not as loud as Ro would have expected. Layers of gray stackstone, pitted and brittle, fell at Kira’s feet as she pounded the wall twice, three times, a fourth—

  —and on her fifth strike, she broke through into an open space, the sound of the hammer disappearing into a seeming abyss beyond the wall.

  Kira dropped the tool and pulled at the ragged edges of the hole with both hands, the brittle rock coming off in plates. In only a minute or two, she had opened a space large enough to step through.

  “What is this?” Yevir asked, not so haughty in the darkness, his voice hushed.

  “Let’s see,” Kira said, still smiling. She took her light stick back from Ro, turned, and stepped through the opening, leaving them no real choice but to follow—Yates first, then Yevir, awkwardly pulling at his robes, and finally Ro.

  Kira held up her light as soon as she stepped through, seeing the place to which the Prophets had led her…and the full understanding of her Orb experience came into her grasp, the information They’d secreted in her mind moving into her awareness.

  In front of her and to either side, stretching away for kilometers, she knew, were corridors upon corridors of rough-hewn crypts, natural and created, openings in the rock where thousands of bodies—ten thousand—had gently mummified or decayed to dust, millennia ago. Each had been sealed by cairns of stone, each closed space undisturbed by time or the elements.

  Behind her, Kasidy drew a sharp breath. Yevir said nothing. It was Ro who broke the silence, holding out her light stick, her voice a rough whisper in the echoing dark.

  “The prophecy of the ten thousand,” she said, and Kira nodded, walking toward the nearest crypt-riddled wall, the truth spilling out as it reached her conscious mind.

  “These are the remains of the men and women who kept Ohalu’s book safe,” she said, her light shining down on hundreds of carefully placed rocks, just for the crypts that were closest. She knew that each individual tomb throughout the extensive network had been sealed the same way, a testament to the binding strengths of their convictions. “They were brought here one by one and in groups, through the centuries, all long before B’hala was lost. Ten thousand of them.”

  “So many…” Yevir said, a thread of discouragement in his soft voice. Kira didn’t know if his despair came from the vast number of “diseased” Bajorans, or the realization that the supposedly profane prophecy was true. Nor did she care; Yevir would have to find his own peace with it.

  “Despite the prevailing orthodoxy that sought to suppress it, all of these people knew that Ohalu had been Touched,” Kira said. “They refused to hide from the truth, that the Prophets could also be experienced as teachers—and they protected the book, because of the prophecy of the Avatar.”

  She turned to Kasidy, smiling at the absolute wonder—and relief—on her face. “They lived and died for the hope that the birth of your child would one day represent the promise of a new age for Bajor. The birth itself will be a catalyst of a kind…but your baby will be your own, Kas, not some symbol, or representation. You don’t have anything to fear.”

  Even as she was speaking, Kasidy walked toward the beginning of the corridor to their left, raising her light stick. There was an opening in the wall that hadn’t been sealed, a pile of rocks on the ground next to it.

  “Why is that one empty?” Yevir asked tonelessly.

  Kira knew, not sure if the final clarity came from the Prophets or her own understanding—but it was Kas who answered, turning back to look at Yevir, wearing the tiniest curve of a smile.

  “It’s for the last guardian of the book,” she said. “It’s for Istani Reyla.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Vedek Yevir Linjarin walked to the center of the small stage, holding his head high. Nearly everyone on Bajor would be watching, he knew, and it was important for them to see that their spiritual leaders had not lost their dignity or their poise.

  Yevir ignored the recording cameras aimed at the podium, instead addressing the vedeks and ranjens who had gathered at the indoor arena, placing his hands on the pulpit and gazing up into their ranks. Hundreds of them, yet it was so silent, he imagined that they could hear the beating of his own heart.

  Only the truth. The Prophets deserve no less.

  “Only two days ago, an unacknowledged book of prophecy was uploaded into Bajor’s communications network, anonymously,” he began, his voice carrying through the room. A strong voice; the voice of a leader.

  “The Vedek Assembly had heard of the book, but until it was placed in the public domain, none of us had read it—and I must admit, some of us were afraid…at first. Afraid that the Prophets would somehow be overlooked in the controversy that was inspired; afraid, perhaps, of the Bajoran people finding out that we knew of this book, but had never spoken of it.”

  Nods from the assembled now, as they heard and acknowledged him.

  “I want everyone to know, to understand—it was I who pushed for this book to be condemned,” he said, finding strength in sharing his awareness of his faults. “I was afraid, because I looked away from the Prophets. Because for a moment, I forgot how strong, how open the Bajoran people are. I forgot that we have always looked for the truth, no matter what form it takes, and that the Prophets would never—never—send us anything we couldn’t learn to accept. The Prophets love us; we are Their children.”

  He could feel himself gaining momentum, could feel it reflected back at him by the men and women watching. His words held power, because they were the truth.

  “I was afraid because of my own lack of faith in Them. For all of the boundless love and respect I feel for Them, I followed my first inclination—to protect Them from secular thoughts, from secular ideas. To my shame, I didn’t want the Vedek Assembly’s authority to be challenged, because I thought that meant some people might turn away from us—and in turning away from us, that they would turn away from the Prophets. I was wrong. I was unworthy.”

  Hundreds of faces frowning, shaking their heads in disagreement.

  “I might have continued on my narrow path, if not for the miraculous return yesterday of the Orb of Memory,” he said, wording himself carefully now. “The Orb, which showed us the truth of the book’s final prophecy—the prophecy of the Avatar, the Emissary’s child, who is not yet born.”

  Slow, lingering smiles of faith throughout the rows, gazes filled with the knowledge of miracles.

  “The Orb has come back to us…and I stand before you today to address the meaning of its return, as I see it. People are beginning to criticize the unyielding stoicism, the elitist conservatism that the Assembly has come to represent to so many of you. People are expressing interest in philosophical debate
, in new interpretations of truth…and what I believe is that the Orb stands for more than the Prophets’ love. I believe that it’s also a sign, a sign that the Prophets choose for us to be open to change. They want us to look into our pasts, to learn from our experiences, and to use our collective knowledge to rise to the challenges of our future.”

  A low murmur of assent rose from the assembled. Yevir felt humility in the face of such understanding, he felt their trust in him grow as he revealed his mortal flaws. It was right and true, that he should lead the revolution for change, that the Prophets had ordained. Why else had They sent him to DS9? It had all been destined from the start.

  “I know it may seem strange, that I would want to tear down the very system that has allowed me this voice, that has made it possible for me to stand here, telling you what I believe,” he said. “And I’m not saying it should be torn down. All I mean to say is that like all of you, I am here to serve the will of the Prophets—and those among us who turn away from Their light have no place in the Bajor of tomorrow, because our lives and our world, our changing views and our established tenets, everything we do, we do for Them. It is all part of Their loving plan for us.”

  Yevir smiled, nodding humbly. “Thank you for listening. Walk with the Prophets.”

  Acceptance flowed from them like water, enveloping him in warmth and forgiveness. Yevir closed his eyes for just a second, knowing that he had reached millions of people the world over, knowing that the Prophets, too, were watching; praise be.

  “What a load,” Quark grumbled, turning away from the viewscreen. Morn nodded, raising his glass to the observation. At least Kai Winn hadn’t hidden her insatiable craving for power; Yevir Linjarin was apparently going for some kind of humility award for that little performance, but it had MEGALOMANIAC written all over it. Either that, or he was a serious fanatic; either way, Bajor was in for a ride.

  Quark wouldn’t have bothered watching, except he knew that practically every Bajoran on the station had been permafixed to their monitors for the duration of the much-heralded speech—and it always paid to know what the zealot faction was up to. Besides, he’d already stopped taking bets on Yevir for kai, and was interested to see the man in action. From the looks of things, the only way he could lose now would be if he got caught beating up children, or delivering a sermon in the nude, something like that.