That was probably it. Adari’s anger rose as Nink did, the uvak comfortably clearing the chain in preparation for an oceanside approach. It would be poetic, Adari thought, if the one project the scholars had entrusted to a Neshtovar had resulted in wrong information. Cetajan Range samples, nothing, she thought. The idiot probably brought us rocks from his front path! She shuddered, and not just from the chilly air. Why should she be made to suffer for their colossal—
Suddenly the source of the smoke column came into view. Adari nearly fell off Nink right then. She’d half expected to see an open caldera, steaming like the smokers—smoke really was a misnomer—she’d seen in the south. Instead, a massive shining shell sat in an indentation on the seaward side of the mountain. That was the word that entered her mind, even if the scale was completely wrong: its sharp, corrugated ridges resembled the ancient conchs she’d seen returned from the seabed. But this shell was the size of the Circle Eternal!
And this shell had smoke—not steam—billowing from several ruptures. Tremendous grooves gouged behind the body showed it had struck downward at an angle. The fires inside were now nearly spent, but she could tell from the melted mangle that they must have been far larger once. The explosion producing the plume visible from the inland side must have happened right when it landed, she thought.
Landed?
Before Adari could contemplate this, movement caught her eye. One of the apertures in the shell disgorged something, something that struck the gravel below and disappeared in a slide of dust. She nudged the uvak nearer. A flash of crimson light appeared in the small cloud—and at its end …
… a man.
The man looked up at her. He was pale of face, lighter than the sickest Keshiri she had ever seen. And in his left hand was a shaft of brilliant red light the size of Izri’s cane.
Was it in his hand—or was it part of his hand? Adari panicked, and Nink agreed, swooping out of the way. A violent but welcome updraft yanked them both back out over the sea.
Adari shook her head violently and closed her eyes as Nink found smoother air. What had she seen? It had the shape of a man, yes. Hair, darker than any Keshiri—but then that red light. What was that light? And there was something else moving on the mountain, too, something she’d seen out of the corner of her eye. Was the shell a nest of some kind?
She swallowed hard, her throat raw from the wind and elevation. It was all too macabre. Sample return missions, Neshtovar inquests—none of her past concerns stood for anything against what she’d seen. Opening her eyes, she brought Nink around on a looping approach parallel to the jagged beach. The giant shell perched near the end of a sheer drop-off, far above. She’d approach from below, this time, rising carefully until she could get a closer look.
Adari soon realized that her plan, while reasonable, was wholly unsuited for a novice rider. Nink strained against her, taking her on a spiraling route to the top that wrenched her stomach. Dizzy, she fought to keep her eye on the cliff top. The figure from before was there, without the bright red light. But holding something else—
Something whizzed past, hurtling downward at such speed that Nink withdrew his wings in fear. Adari slipped for real this time, tumbling backward. Flailing, she caught the uvak’s clawed foot with one arm on the way down—and desperately wrapped her other arm around it. “Nink!”
She strained to look up, but Nink was on the move, sailing away from the crest and its strange goings-on as fast as his reptile wings could carry them. Dangling, she saw that Nink was making for the safety of their earlier roost, farther up the chain. He’d obviously had enough surprises for one day.
So had she. But at least she was getting used to them.
Or so she thought.
* * *
Shortly before the sun slipped behind the western ocean, she watched the last wisps of smoke disappear from the mountaintop. Adari didn’t think Nink could be coaxed up there again before her water-pouch ran out. The dried brekka beets were already gone. She’d left so quickly she hadn’t restocked her expedition pack.
Now, sitting on a ledge and watching the sunset, she drew an invisible continent on her knee, wondering how far she would have to fly to reach any settlement that had not heard of her plight. There probably wasn’t such a place. The Neshtovar weren’t just the peacekeepers and lawgivers, they were the communications system that made far-flung Kesh one world. Circuit riders would have already spread the word from Tahv to the elder riders in each village. She had escaped, but freedom was no deliverance for her.
Deliverance.
The word reached her on the wind. It wasn’t even a word, really—not one she had heard before. A strange, melodic combination of syllables that meant nothing to her ear. Yet her mind recognized it as a familiar concept: deliverance.
Instinctively, she looked back toward the mysterious peak, drowning in shadow. Lights winked in the darkness near its massive base. Fires—but not the uncontrolled fires that must have been present at the mountaintop. These fires had been set.
Adari sprang to her feet, losing her water-pouch over the edge. The Neshtovar! They’d hunted her here, and they’d camped, and in the morning, they’d find her! They wouldn’t wait to find out what she’d seen atop the mountain, not when she’d compounded her crime by daring to fly Nink.
A breeze was blowing to the sea from the direction of the mountain. Cool, calming. Deliverance, came the word again. Another feeling followed, complex and emphatic: We are yours—and you are ours.
Adari blinked back bewildered tears and stepped toward the sleeping uvak. The wind rose again.
Come to us.
She’d been wrong to come here. The sky had told her to, but it didn’t seem like any kind of deliverance Adari knew.
Her nose crinkled at the stench. The gully was dark, but it was clear something awful had been burned there. Even the sulfurous pits of the south weren’t this bad. She looked back at Nink, yawning in the woods and unwilling to follow her farther. Wise animal.
The active fires were ahead, through trees over the hill. Air caressed her as she crept up. Whatever they were burning, it wasn’t what was in the gully.
In the clearing below, Adari saw them: people. As many people as had been at her final hearing, only gathered around multiple campfires. She again thought of the Neshtovar lying in wait for her. If so, then her arriving on foot was probably for the best. She strained to make out their voices as she approached. She recognized one, but not his words. She crept closer—
—and left her feet entirely, hurtling toward a tree. Flailing, Adari slammed hard against it, collapsing breathlessly at its base. Figures rushed at her from the shadows. Scrambling, she saw them—their bodies illuminated not by the fires, but from stalks of magenta energy emanating from their hands, just like she had seen before. She tripped over a root. “No!”
She never hit the ground. An unseen force yanked her through the maze of figures, depositing her abruptly before the largest bonfire. Rising, her back to the flames, she looked at the advancing wraiths. They were people, but not like her. Not purple, but beige, brown, red, and more—every color but what they were supposed to be. And some faces weren’t like hers at all. Tiny tentacles wiggled on red jowls. A fat, leprous figure, twice as bulky as the rest and with a hide like Nink’s, stood behind them all, grunting gutturally.
Adari screamed—but they weren’t listening. They were all around her now, man, woman, and monster, shouting gibberish. She mashed her hands to her ears. It did no good. The words were digging past her ears. Digging at her mind.
Mental pinpricks became knives. Adari reeled. The strangers surged forward physically and ethereally—pushing, scraping, searching. Waves of images flashed before her, of her sons, her house, her people—every-thing that was Adari, everything that was Kesh. She still saw mouths moving, but the cacophony now boomed inside her head. Words, meaningless words …
… that somehow began connecting with familiar impressions. As with the breeze before, the voic
es were alien, but she could feel the sounds coalescing around rational thoughts.
“You are here.”
“There are others. There are others.”
“Bring them here.”
“Take us there!”
“Bring them here!”
Adari spun, or all of Kesh did. Above her, the group parted for a new arrival. It was a woman. Darker-skinned than the others, she held a baby tightly swaddled in a red cloth. Mother, Adari thought against the clamorous assault. A sign of hope. Mercy.
“BRING THEM HERE BRING THEM HERE BRING THEM HERE!”
Adari screamed, writhing against the unseen claws raking at her. The others were holding back. The woman above was not. Adari reeled. She thought she saw the veined wings of Nink, flying overhead and away.
A hand appeared on the mother’s shoulder from behind, drawing her back. The din faded from Adari’s mind. She looked up to see—Zhari Vaal?
No, she realized, as her teary eyes focused. Another of the strangely clad figures, but short and stocky like her husband. She had once imagined Zhari at the bottom of the sea, his rich mauve color drained. This man was paler still, but his dark shock of hair and reddish brown eyes gave him a confident, compelling look. She had seen him before, on the mountain. She had heard him before, on the wind.
“Korsin,” he said, simultaneously in her mind and with a voice as soothing as her grandfather’s. He gestured to himself. “I am called Korsin.”
Blackness closed around her.
Chapter Three
On her third day among the newcomers, Adari learned to talk.
She’d spent the first full day after the terrifying encounter asleep, if that was the right term for a feverish, nightmare slumber interrupted by brief patches of delirium. Several times, she’d opened her eyes only to shut them quickly on seeing the strangers hovering around her.
But they were tending to her, not harassing her—as she’d found the second morning, awakening between an impossibly soft blanket and the rough ground. The newcomers had found a secluded dry spot for her, with several figures sitting vigil. Adari had drunk the water they offered, but it didn’t restore her voice. Her head still rang, her mind bruised by the earlier assault. None of her vocabulary came when called. She had forgotten how to speak.
Korsin was sitting with her when she finally remembered. He’d called over Hestus, a rust-colored figure with a shining mask covering part of his acid-scarred face. It almost looked like it was part of his face—various bits hiding under his skin. Adari had flinched in fear, but Hestus had simply sat calmly, listening as Korsin tried to talk with her.
And they talked. Awkwardly, at first, with Hestus piping in occasionally to repeat a new Keshiri word she had said, followed by his own language’s equivalent. Adari had marveled. The Keshiri words Hestus spoke sounded exactly like what she’d said—in her own voice, even. Korsin had explained that Hestus’s “special ear” gave him that talent, helping to speed along the exchange of information.
Adari was interested in that exchange, but most of the information had gone the other way. She gathered that the people Korsin led had indeed come from the silver shell, and that it had somehow fallen from the sky. It was also clear that, powerful as they were, they had no means of leaving the mountain now, isolated as it was by water and forbidding terrain. Korsin had listened with interest as she spoke about Kesh and the Keshiri, of uvak and villages on the mainland. She’d mentioned the Skyborn only once, before stopping in near embarrassment. She didn’t know who the newcomers were, but she felt abashed bringing it up.
Now, on the third afternoon since her arrival, Adari was speaking comfortably with the newcomers—and had even picked up some words in their language herself. They were something called “Sith,” and Korsin was “human.” She repeated the words. “You’re a good listener,” Korsin said, encouraged. He said others had worked with her as she slept—he did not say how—to try to improve communications. Now they were progressing quickly, and it was not all their doing. Even overwrought, Adari remained sharp.
“Our immediate concern, Adari Vaal,” Korsin said, emptying a glistening pouch of powder into a cup for her, “must be to reach the mainland.” There wasn’t food or shelter enough for his people here, and the mountain had sheer drop-offs to the sea below. Her uvak might have provided an exit for someone, but Nink, as fearful of the newcomers as he was of the mountain’s native wildlife, had spent the last few days far out of reach, above.
Drinking the broth—it was filling, not unlike her mother’s stew, she thought—Adari wrestled with the problem. Nink might come when she called, but only if she was standing in the open, alone. She could fly to land and return with help. “I couldn’t take any riders, though.” Nink might not appear if she was accompanied, and a novice rider could never carry a passenger in any event. “I’d have to go alone. But I’d return as soon as I could.”
“She will not!”
Adari knew the voice before she even looked up. The screamer. The mother of the small child charged toward the smoldering campfire. “She will abandon us!”
Korsin rose and took the woman aside. Adari heard heated words exchanged, unfamiliar ones. But in bidding the woman away, he spoke words Adari did recognize: “We are her deliverance, and she is ours.”
Adari watched the woman, still glaring at her from afar. “She doesn’t like me.”
“Seelah?” Korsin shrugged. “She’s concerned over her mate—lost from the crash site. And with a child, she’s anxious to leave this mountain.” He smiled, offering to help Adari stand. “As a mother, I’m sure you understand.”
Adari gulped. She hadn’t mentioned her children. She’d barely even thought about them since she arrived among the newcomers, she realized. Shaking her head in guilt, she revealed something else: that the Keshiri might not listen to her.
Korsin seemed unsurprised—and unruffled. “You’re smart, Adari. You’ll make them listen.” He gently wrapped her shoulders with the azure blanket she’d slept beneath. “Keep this,” he said. “The sun’s setting soon. It could be a cold ride.”
Adari looked around. Seelah stood in silent fury, unmoved from before. The others Korsin had introduced eyed their leader nervously; red tentacle-jowled Ravilan exchanged a worried look with Hestus. Even the hulking Gloyd, who, despite his brutish appearance, was clearly Korsin’s greatest ally here, shifted uncomfortably. But no one barred her from leaving their campsite.
When a strong hand did stop her at the edge of the clearing, she was surprised to see whose it was: Korsin’s. “About the Keshiri,” Korsin said. “You told us about Tahv, your town—it sounds a good size. But how many are the Keshiri? How many Keshiri are there in all, I mean?”
Adari answered immediately. “We’re numberless.”
“Ah,” Korsin said, his posture softening. “You mean they have never been counted.”
“No,” Adari said. “I mean, we don’t have a number that large.”
Korsin froze, his grip on her arm tightening. His dark eyes, slightly smaller than a Keshiri’s, focused on the wilderness beyond. She’d never seen him unnerved. If this was it, it lasted less than a second before he stepped back.
“Before you leave,” he said, finding a tree to lean against, “tell me what you know about the Skyborn.”
Korsin had called the vessel he arrived in Omen. The word not only existed in the Keshiri tongue, but was a long-held favorite of the Neshtovar. Watching what was happening now on the plaza known as the Circle Eternal, Adari guessed even the uvak-riding chiefs were realizing the irony.
She had returned to Korsin after a single day, one full week after Omen had collided with the mountain—and with her life. It had been a simple matter for her to attract the uvak-riders there; as soon as the patrols spotted her and Nink, they followed the whole way to the Cetajan Range. The place had been the scene for several surprises in recent times, but none trumped the moment when the Neshtovar came upon Adari standing defiantly amid 240 support
ive visitors from above, almost every one signaling his or her presence with a glowing ruby lightsaber. She didn’t have one of the strange devices, but she glowed just the same from within. Adari Vaal, collector of rocks and enemy of order was now Adari Vaal, discoverer and rescuer; answerer of the mountain’s call.
Add “prophet” to that, she thought as she watched the dozen score visitors—some hobbling from their ordeal—enter the Circle Eternal. They passed between gawking, silent crowds of Keshiri, many of the same people from her door the week before. Ahead in the Circle, all the Neshtovar in the region were present, more than she’d ever seen. Three days of aerial rescue operations had brought the newcomers off the mountain, days in which the word had gone out far into the hinterlands.
The Skyborn had arrived on Kesh.
No lesser reason could explain why the riders compliantly took their positions not in the Circle Eternal itself, but along the raised perimeter. The villagers had watched Adari’s hearing from here; now the Neshtovar were watching her in the Circle, marching along behind Korsin. Behind them, the visitors filed in, forming their own inner perimeter over which the Neshtovar strained to see.
Izri Dazh looked small, standing beneath the column three times his height that served as the sundial’s gnomon. Normally, it made him seem larger. Not today. He limped forward and greeted Korsin and company with mawkish words of praise before turning to the audience. Straining to see over the line of visitors, Izri made the declaration official. These were the Skyborn, he said, come down from the very mountain from which their servants had brought back the law centuries earlier. It wasn’t the same mountain, Adari knew; perhaps the texts would be changed later. But Izri ignored that detail for now. The visitors had established their identities to the satisfaction of all of the Neshtovar, he said.
“You didn’t believe them when they levitated your cane,” Adari whispered, unable to resist.
Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #2: Skyborn Page 2
