Jariad’s team of Sabers, meanwhile, had proven lacking in formal training. He’d insisted on being their only mentor, but had only begun serious combat training in recent weeks, after Seelah made the decision to strike. Jariad reminded her more of his father every day. There was no corner Devore Korsin would not cut.
The uvak disappearance was an unexpected problem, but it cut equally, removing escape for all. The Keshiri had cleared all the animals out. Had Jariad made that preparation without telling her? Unlikely. But it seemed to have affected Korsin’s hopes. There, down on the reinforced slope beside Omen’s temple, he continued to look up. Seelah was certain he wasn’t looking at her.
Seelah relished the view. Jariad had Korsin now. Trained or not, his Sabers had the numbers. As his bodyguards lagged, Korsin backed toward the precipice, the same mark from which Devore had fallen. Jariad would like that. He seemed to be relishing every moment—slashing again and again at Korsin, his blade occasionally finding its mark. Korsin was hurt now—bleeding badly. Jariad pushed ever closer, driving his uncle backward.
And yet, Korsin kept looking up.
What was he expecting?
A crash from behind drew her attention. The limp form of one of her aides rocketed through a skylight and disappeared over the side. So that’s where Gloyd is. He had to be contained, away from the action below. Angered at being robbed of seeing Korsin die, Seelah turned to the shattered skylight—
—only to lose her footing as beating wings soared across the crest of the rooftop. Seelah rolled sideways, avoiding the kicking, clawed feet. The uvak were back!
Tumbling through the gaping hole, Seelah hit the stone floor on all fours. Gloyd’s battle was in the next room, but she scrambled for the window anyway. She had to see. Had the Keshiri returned with the uvak? Or was it someone she had never considered, never counted on?
Looking out, she saw.
Nida.
4
Korsin had played his trump.
Nida’s very existence, he knew, was part of Seelah’s game to keep herself and Jariad close to the seat of power. Giving Korsin a daughter was of use to Seelah; Nida herself, wasn’t. Seelah had “caringly” found a series of Keshiri nursemaids and then tutors for the child, boarding her in one village after another. Officially, it was a gesture of Sith trust in the Keshiri; in truth, it reflected the hole he’d always known was in his wife’s heart.
There was more. Seelah wasn’t just getting Nida out of the way; Korsin knew she was preventing her daughter from receiving anything more than superficial training in Sith ways. Seelah kept the rolls of Sith on Kesh; she knew where all potential mentors were at any time.
But Korsin had several loyal crew members willing to serve him in any role. With Gloyd’s help, Korsin had staged their deaths in remote areas of Kesh and sent them into hiding. All during the nights of Nida’s seeming exile, the girl had secretly been learning the ways of the dark side—even as, during the days, she was winning Keshiri friends and building a network of informants. All in her seemingly meaningless—but very mobile—role as aerial ambassador for the Sith.
While Seelah was striving to portray herself as the model Sith on Kesh, Korsin was crafting a leader, someone with the talents to fight and to govern. An heir—and today, a savior.
The night before, one of Nida’s Keshiri acquaintances had revealed the plot to steal the uvak while the principal Sith were atop the mountain. She’d spent the morning making sure whatever the Keshiri were doing went no further, before joining Korsin here—along with her Skyborn Rangers and several Korsin partisans. Not many, and not as soon as he’d hoped—but enough, and in time. He’d flushed out his enemies by coming here; their surprise was complete.
Nida leapt to the ground, lightsaber glowing, impaling one of Jariad’s thugs as she landed. Two converged upon her position, only to be cut in half. She threw a third into the temple wall, just behind. There wasn’t much fighting ground by the cliffside, but Nida was already dominating it. Jariad himself had backed away from Korsin before the kill, joining his Sabers in their fight.
A muffled explosion came from the mansion farther up the hill. Gloyd, Korsin knew. Gritting his teeth, the captain dabbed at the gash on his chest. He wasn’t coming back from this, he knew. The ground faltered beneath him. There wasn’t much left.
But he looked up again at Nida.
So strong. His future for the Sith, battling Seelah’s future. And winning.
Wincing in pain, Korsin crawled back from the precipice toward the fray. Jariad, injured and struggling to stall his sibling’s advance, looked back in surprise.
“You’re right, Jariad,” Korsin said, choking back blood. “It’s time for me to go—but not without my last official act. And it’s overdue.”
Adari should have been more surprised. By nightfall, more than a thousand Keshiri had arrived near the foot of the Spire, leading five times that many riderless uvak. The mob of beasts circling high above the smoking formation had given the appearance of a living, leathery halo. It was stirring, but disappointing: this many would barely have filled the uvak pens in the southern foothills.
Adari had given up scanning the horizon long before her compatriots did. At midnight, a lone rider from Tahv had arrived, breathless and terrified. His report confirmed her suspicion. Tona had fallen under Nida Korsin’s spell and revealed all their plans.
It had been hopeless from the beginning; someone would have betrayed them. Tona was just the weakest. Adari had turned away before she heard whether Nida had rewarded Tona, or killed him. Nothing mattered anymore.
What had surprised Adari was what had happened next. She’d expected everyone to leave. To fly away, free their uvak, and melt back into Keshiri society before the Sith found them. Instead, when she’d somberly taken to the clouds on Nink and headed for the dark river of air, she’d found the entire entourage in her wake.
She’d fallen asleep, assuming Nink would surrender to gravity in the night. So many others had already fallen away into the oean since they’d left Keshtah behind. Her turn would come.
But she awoke to something else.
From above, the spit of land was no more than a seam between the waves, a chain of reefs adjoining a mucky surface barely larger than her old neighborhood. Nothing about it suggested a haven. But the jet stream had given out—and so had Nink. Of the riders who had begun, fewer than three hundred remained. It was this, or nothing.
And this is close to nothing, she thought as she padded across the salty grime of the beach. The mainland had provided everything the Keshiri needed to thrive. Here, bare necessities would have to be clawed for. Infrequent rains pooled fresh water on concave reefs. The uvak, useless with no destination in sight, would have to be culled dramatically to give the scant vegetation a chance. Their flesh was barely edible; their carcasses yielded the only building materials.
To her intellectual pursuits, the island offered nothing at all. Just the same volcanic rubble from beach to hillcrest. Years in a purgatory of her own making weren’t enough, it seemed: now she must be bored to death. All she’d found was an ancient Keshiri corpse—another lonely victim of the oceanic air currents.
Why couldn’t the Sith have landed here?
She knew the answer. The Sith had been trapped in such a place. To save herself—from them, and from the elders—she had set them loose. Korsin had been right, those years ago. We all do what we have to do.
They were doing it now. Adari looked at Nink, dying of exhaustion, forked feet barely responding to the caresses of the surf. She couldn’t simply bury him when the time came; he’d be needed, just like the rest. The uvak were integral to their survival—but disposable when necessary.
The Sith had looked upon the Keshiri in exactly the same way.
Adari studied her people, toiling mutely on the island. They expected they wouldn’t survive the year. Worse, anyone who came looking for them would not be a savior.
Perhaps Korsin’s Sith worried about the
same thing, she thought. Perhaps the tales were true. Perhaps the real Skyborn, the true Protectors of legend, were out there somewhere, hunting for the Sith.
She didn’t believe it.
But then, she never had.
Seelah awoke on a slab in her old sick ward. There wasn’t any difference between the patient accommodations and the biers in the morgue; it was all cold marble, just as everything in the accursed temple was.
Seelah was moving now—only her legs weren’t. She remembered it all. Seconds after she saw Nida arrive, Gloyd had brought the fight into Seelah’s chamber. Gloyd had always bragged that whoever took him out wouldn’t live to celebrate. Indeed, cornered by Seelah and her confederates, Gloyd had activated something he must have had literally up his sleeve since the crash: a proton detonator. The Houk’s insurance policy had brought the room down on the entire party.
The Force had helped free Seelah from the rubble that pinned her from the knees down, but nothing could make her walk again. She didn’t need her medical training to recognize that. She’d worked tirelessly to become a perfect specimen of humanity, something for the Tribe to aspire to. Now, sitting up and surveying her cuts and bruises, she knew she would never live up to her old example again.
“You’re awake.” came a soft female voice. “Good.”
Seelah craned her neck to see her daughter in the doorway, wearing her outfit from Dedication Day. When Nida didn’t move to enter, Seelah used her aching arms to turn herself.
“You’re going to be doing a lot of that,” Nida said, stepping inside and dipping a cup into a basin. She drank deeply and exhaled. “Oh, when you need it, the water’s over here.” She looked away.
Nida explained how she had learned from Tona Vaal of the plan to steal the Sith’s uvak, timed just when as many important Sith as possible would be on the mountain. It had taken her more time than she expected, but she had foiled the plot in Tahv and hurried to her father’s side. But she’d arrived too late. “I guess you can feel it—Father’s gone.”
Seelah licked her lips, tasting her own dried blood. “Yes. And Jariad?”
“Father tried to throw him over the side with the Force,” Nida said. “He tried … and when he failed, I did it.”
Seelah looked blankly at her daughter.
“I hated to use poor Tona like that,” Nida said, “but he thought he had something I wanted.” She took another sip. “We had something in common, you know. Our mothers had no use for our fathers.”
Tona had revealed that the conspirators were taking the uvak to the Sessal Spire, but he knew nothing beyond that. “There’s no sign of them there,” Nida said. “Our guess is they plunged themselves into the lava pit. In spite—or fear. It doesn’t matter.” Sith or Keshiri, dissent was finished on Kesh. It had been a productive day.
“I came here because we just had the reading of Father’s final testament,” she said. It existed—in her care. “He commends his legacy to me—and the three surviving High Lords have ratified it. So you see? You are the mother of the new Grand Lord. Congratulations.” Nida beamed. At her age, she could expect to rule Kesh for decades to come. “Or until the Sith come to rescue us.”
Seelah sneered. “You are a child.” She slid from the slab, only to brace herself against it with her hands when her feet failed to respond. “No one’s coming for us. Your father knew that.”
“He told me. It doesn’t really matter to me, one way or the other.”
“It should,” Seelah said, struggling to straighten. “If I tell those people out there …”
Nida casually replaced the cup and stepped back toward the doorway. “There’s no one out there,” she said. “Perhaps you should hear the rest of Father’s final wishes. Henceforth, on the death of the Grand Lord, that person’s spouse and household laborers would be sacrificed. He got the idea from an old Keshiri custom. Technically, it’s to honor the Grand Lord—but you and I know what it’s really about.” She ran her gloved fingers through her hair. “I imagine it’s going to put a crimp in my social life, but I’ll cope.”
Seelah caught her breath. “You can’t mean to …?”
“Relax,” Nida said. “Henceforth. No, I’ve ordered that all Sith remove themselves from this mountain, in honor of Father’s passing. While I live, none may return here. This is your new home—again.” And with that, she stepped out into the courtyard.
It took Seelah painful minutes to follow, dragging herself across the stonework. Nida was stepping onto the stirrup of her uvak, surrounded by hejarbo-shoot crates of fruits and vegetables. More would be dropped by regular uvak overflights, Nida said; the only creatures, wild or trained, to be allowed in the airspace above the temple. Elsewhere in the compound, access to Omen’s shelter had been cut off. Below, the path up the mountain was being barricaded, even now. It had been painstakingly carved, but it would now be blocked forever.
What remained, Seelah saw as she looked around, was the cold temple she had come to despise living in. A home fit only for a goddess on high—forever. Alone.
“Nida,” Seelah coughed as Nida began to take flight. “Nida, you’re my child.”
“Yes, that’s what they tell me. Good-bye.”
PURGATORY
1
3960 BBY
Their afternoon began as it always had. The rake fell, gouging orderly grooves into the black mud. Lifting it for another pass, the wielder brought it down again, neatly bisecting the furrows.
Ori Kitai watched from across the hedge. The young farmer went so slowly. The rake, an insubstantial marriage of hejarbo shoots and flinty rocks, nonetheless parted the rich soil with ease. But Jelph of Marisota seemed to be in no hurry—at this, or anything else.
How monotonous it must be, Ori thought. All day, every day, the man in the straw-brimmed hat tended his duties, with no place to go or friends to see. His homestead sat alone at a bend of the Marisota River, far from most centers of Sith culture on Kesh. Nothing existed upstream but volcanoes and jungle; nothing downriver but the ghost towns of the Ragnos Lakes. It was no life for a human.
“Lady Orielle,” Jelph said, doffing the hat. Sandy hair hung in a long braid outside the collar of his soaked blouse.
“Just Ori,” she said. “I’ve told you a dozen times.”
“And that means a dozen visits,” he said in that strange accent of his. “I’m honored.”
The slender, auburn-haired woman strolled along the hedge, casting sidelong glances at the workman. She didn’t have any reason to hide why she still came here—not with her family’s future about to be assured. Ori could do what she wanted. And yet, as she stepped through the opening onto the gravel path, she felt meek and fifteen again. Not a Sith Saber of the Tribe, a decade older.
Her brown eyes trained on the ground, she chuckled to herself. There was no reason for modesty. Ori wore the black uniform of her office. Jelph wore rags. She’d passed the tests of apprenticeship on the grounds of the palace, along the glorious promenade walked by Grand Lord Korsin more than a millennium earlier. Jelph’s home was a hovel, his holding less a farm than a depot for the fertilized soils he provided the gardeners of the cities.
And yet the man had something she’d never encountered in another human: He had nothing to prove. No one ever looked directly at her in Tahv. Not really. People always had one eye on what the conversation could mean for them, on how her mother could help them. Jelph had no thoughts of advancement.
What good would such thoughts be to a slave?
Setting down the rake, Jelph stepped from the mud and pulled a towel from his belt. “I know why you’re here,” he said, wiping his hands, “but not why you’re here today. What’s the big occasion this time?”
“Donellan’s Day.”
Jelph looked blankly at her. “That one of your Sith holidays?”
Ori tilted her head as she followed him around the hut. “You were Sith once, too, you know.”
“That’s what they tell me,” he said, pitching the towel awa
y. It landed in a bucket on the ground, out of his sight. “I’m afraid we don’t cultivate much ancestral memory out in the hinterlands.”
Ori smiled. He was so learned, for a lesser. Jelph cultivated plenty, out of sight of the trail where she’d left her uvak to graze until she was ready to fly again. Behind the house, past the small mountains of river clay he traded with the Keshiri, he kept six trellises of the most beautiful dalsa flowers she’d ever seen. Like the hut and rake, the trellises were made from lashed-together hejarbo shoots—and yet they made for a display that rivaled the horticultural wonders of the High Seat. Here, behind a slave’s quarters in the middle of nowhere.
Taking the crystal blade she offered, the hazel-eyed farmer started cutting the specimens she selected. As usual, they’d decorate the urns on her mother’s balcony at the revels.
“So your event. What is it?” Pausing, he looked down at her. “If you want to tell me, that is.”
“Nida Korsin’s firstborn was born a thousand years ago tomorrow.”
“Oh,” Jelph said, trimming. “Did he become Grand Lord or something?”
She smirked. “Oh, no.” The reign of Nida Korsin had initiated a robust, glorious age for the Sith, she explained. Donellan knew that his father, the Lord Consort, would be put to death on Nida’s passing. That was in Yaru Korsin’s will. But he’d waited too long to make his move. Nida’s only son had died an old man, waiting for his chance to rise to power. It was the end of a dynastic system; following his passing, heirless Nida had instituted succession based on merit.
“So this guy failed, and he has his own day?”
The Sith liked the message of Donellan’s story, she told him. Many Sith were patient about engineering their ascensions, but it was possible to be too patient. “Donellan’s Day is also called the Day of the Dispossessed. And think about it,” she said, admiring his muscled arms through the slit sleeves. “Has the Tribe ever really needed a cause for a celebration?”
Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories Page 11
