Star Trek: Terok Nor: Dawn of the Eagles - By S.D. Perry & Britta Dennison Page 0,1

would not take her own blessings for granted, that she would always be grateful for what she had. Besides, as Fasil was often quick to point out, they had to eat, too. Feeling guilt over that would feed no one.

She found Ketauna on the field. He was dressed in shabby and rough clothing like the volunteers around him. He had his back to Opaka as he bent to assist a woman who was planting a large rubberwood sapling. After a moment under Opaka’s gaze, the artist cocked his head and then turned, as if he had felt Opaka looking at him. He shaded his eyes with his hands to block out the midday brilliance of B’hava’el.

“Your Eminence,” he called up to her, waving. He started toward her, his expression as bright as the day. “I am pleased with the way the gardens are beginning to come together.”

Opaka nodded to him, putting her hands together underneath her robes. “Yes, Ketauna, it’s going to be lovely.” She walked down the steps from the porch to speak to him, a friend of hers since long before she had been named kai—and one of those who had accompanied her when she had recovered the last Tear of the Prophets, that which was believed to be the lost Orb of Prophecy and Change, missing since the time of Kai Dava. The Orb was safely hidden now, looked after by the monks who presided over the shrine at Ashalla. Opaka visited Ashalla when she could, but she did not do as much traveling now as she might have liked; her health would not permit it. In the past six years, she had come to spend more and more time at this location, a place that remained hidden from the Cardassians’ attention, nestled as it was in a remote location between two provincial boundaries.

Opaka was reluctant to commit herself to a single place, but she had to admit that she was not getting any younger; her aging body would not sustain the nomadic lifestyle to which she had been committed when she had first begun to preach. But there was no small measure of selfishness in her acquiescence to allow this place to be constructed, for if she remained here, she would be closer to her son, Fasil, a resistance fighter who lived in nearby Kendra. It was generally understood that this place, in addition to being home to Opaka, was a place of sanctuary for the freedom fighters of Kendra, Opaka Fasil among them.

Ketauna bowed slightly as they met. “I would offer no less to the shrine that will become home to the kai.”

Opaka hesitated, and then smiled. “I agree that it is appropriate for the shrine to be a peaceful place, a place of respite and beauty,” she said. “But…sometimes the extravagance seems a bit…brazen, considering its purpose…”

“Oh, but, Your Eminence,” Ketauna exclaimed, “you know the workers have all volunteered their time. The resources we have used in the construction and adornment of the shrine—all have come from people who gave willingly. Your followers want this place to be the most beautiful shrine on Bajor, Your Eminence—as an offering to the Prophets who watch over us. It will belong to all of your followers, Opaka. To all of Bajor.”

Your followers. She still never knew quite what to do with herself when she heard that. She nodded her concession instead. The shrine was nearly finished, and there was little reason to squabble over the particulars of it now.

I am not the potter, but the potter’s clay, she thought randomly, watching Ketauna return to work. While she was grateful to the Prophets for Their many blessings, it was difficult at times to know that so many looked to her for guidance. She could only speak her heart, and hope that the men and women who listened to her would venerate the message rather than the messenger.

Ever since her vision, which had revealed to her the hidden Orb, there had been others. Of late, she’d had a recurring dream that had begun to intrude upon her waking time. A man’s name had been spoken repeatedly by various shadowy figures in her visions, a name unknown to her. She had not yet asked anyone at the sanctuary if the name was one she should have been familiar with, trying to find it somewhere within the archives of her own memory, but there had been so many new people, so many names and faces since she’d left her home, each