Star Trek: Terok Nor: Dawn of the Eagles - By S.D. Perry & Britta Dennison Page 0,3

privacy, but an illusion of it.

Bareil seemed to study her in turn, his eyes alight. “You see, Your Eminence, I…knew that I must come to you…to be under your tutelage…. I…I have had a vision, Your Eminence.” He bowed his head.

“A vision,” Opaka said quietly. “Tell me about it, Prylar.”

He continued, his words tumbling out with long-pent-up anticipation. “It told me that I must come to be in service to the kai during the time of the Emissary.”

Opaka took a small step back. “What do you know of the Emissary, Prylar Bareil?” She herself had lately been reading many prophecies that concerned the Emissary, a few of which had become interwoven with items from her dreams, and she had shared her revelations with no one. A name had come to her lately, and she had begun to believe that it was somehow associated with the fabled Emissary of the Prophets, though whether the name—Kalem Apren—was the name of the Emissary himself, Opaka did not know.

“I—not much, your Eminence,” the prylar said, looking somewhat embarrassed. “But…I was hoping that perhaps you could tell me the things that I wish to know.”

Opaka opened the gate where Fasil had closed it behind them. “Yes,” she said. “Perhaps I can…and perhaps there are some things that you will be able to tell me, as well, Prylar Bareil. Please, come inside.”

Opaka could immediately sense hesitation in her son, but she touched his arm in an absent-minded gesture of reassurance, and went on speaking to the prylar. “I bid you welcome to the sanctuary of the kai.” She gestured to the youth in the saffron robes, and he followed her through the gates.

“Tell me, Prylar Bareil,” Opaka said as they entered the sanctuary, “have you ever heard of anyone named Kalem Apren?”

“Yes, I have,” Bareil answered without hesitation. “He is one of the locals from the Kendra Valley that I spoke to when I was attempting to locate you.”

“From the Kendra Valley,” Opaka repeated, thinking to herself that he must be someone that she had already known before, in some capacity.

Fasil cut in. “Kalem Apren is an arbiter in the Kendra Valley,” he told his mother. “He was a member of the Ministry, before the occupation—from Hedrikspool, originally. He is still well-respected among many in the region, and has taken up the mantle of informal governing.”

Opaka was taken aback at her son’s casual reply. It seemed Fasil had possessed the answer to her question all along…and suddenly, she was afraid. Sometimes, there were associations made, feelings that she’d learned not to deny in spite of the seeming implausibility of their connection. As they walked with the prylar whom she had just admitted to the sanctuary, observing him as he took in his new surroundings, she felt it strongly; the young man belonged here, she had no doubt of it, but something about his arrival, Fasil’s awareness of the name that had settled into her thoughts…

She continued to walk and smile, but felt something inside of her closing, shuttering against the implications. Something had underscored her constant fears, lent them a credibility that went beyond the usual—that her only son might leave her soon, to walk with the Prophets.

1

Kalem Apren could have been perfectly content with his current lot in life. When he had been minister of Hedrikspool Province, before the average Bajoran even knew that there was a Cardassian Union, there was always a part of him that resented the responsibility that came with his birthright. He had never been like Kubus Oak, who relished his power so comprehensively that it had devoured him, landed him straight into the lap of a traitorous alien presence. No, Kalem had never been one to clutch and grapple at the authority of his D’jarra; he had always thought himself more like Jas Holza that way, content to simply wield his title and let his adjutants do most of the actual governing.

How times have changed, he thought grimly as he wandered through the afternoon marketplace at Vekobet, in the central region of Kendra Province. Kalem had never particularly cared for Kendra, and had often wondered why the Prophets arranged it that he would be here on business when the Cardassians first showed their true colors. It had been a chaotic time, frightening, infuriating, terrifying. He had offered to help reorganize civilians in the aftermath, with Jaro Essa and some of the other Militiamen on the scene—those of the Bajoran homeguard who had not been killed or absorbed into the false