“Not likely. Who do you think took Bentado’s hand?”
From behind in the anteroom, a loud click. “I’ve worked the latch, Caretaker,” Jaye said, rising. The massive inner door to the rotunda groaned open for the first time in centuries.
“Small fingers,” Hilts said. “Helps to have someone following you.” Jaye waited for his master and Iliana to enter before following, fresh glow rod in hand.
Where Omen’s home below had a humongous occupant, nothing stood in this smaller rotunda but a single chair beside a brazier. Hilts stepped eagerly toward it. Yes, it was what he thought it was. The command chair. The Grand Lord’s throne.
Close enough to touch the seat, Hilts paused and looked around. It was a strange place for it, alone here in this room atop the Temple. He squinted into the void above. Jaye’s single glow rod wasn’t enough to light the place. “Do you see something up there?”
“I think I know,” Iliana said. Grabbing Jaye, she violently ripped the tunic from the startled clerk’s back. Without a word, she balled the cloth up and tossed it into the brazier. With the help of the flint tool chained to the side, she soon had a small fire going. Smoke wafted up to slits near the ceiling apex.
Made chilly, Jaye fretted. “Someone outside might see the smoke.”
“I don’t care,” Iliana said. “I’ve got nothing left but to fight it out.”
Hilts looked at his aide and shrugged. It did get surprisingly cold up here—cold enough to discomfit even a traveler from the stars. “Just stay close to the fire,” he said, before glancing upward.
For a moment he thought he saw the stars outside. Then with another look, he realized that he had—in a way.
“A planetarium!”
Embedded in the rounded ceiling were crimson stones, glowing warmly as the fire below flickered. One by one, he picked out the stars of Kesh’s summer sky—and saw many smaller ones he wasn’t familiar with.
“Are those Lignan crystals up there?” Iliana asked.
Hilts laughed. “Why not?” Omen’s crew would have had plenty of them.
He turned his attention back to the chair, the missing piece from the starship’s bridge. It wasn’t hard to imagine Yaru Korsin here, sitting at night, contemplating his people’s return to the stars. He thought again about Korsin’s line from the Testament. What was behind the throne? Nothing here that he could see—just empty wall. Was it something in the star map? No, that was above.
Indifferent to the display overhead—and to any sense of history—Iliana flopped onto the chair, throwing her booted legs over the armrest.
Hilts gawked at her. “You’re going to sit there?”
“I’m not going to. I am.” Casually, she unclipped her lightsaber and tossed it from hand to hand. “Those people outside will either bring the Temple down underneath us, or they’ll find us here. If I’m going to wait, I’m going to sit.”
“Whatever.”
“You know, this room is pretty useless,” Iliana said, cracking her wrists. “It only shows the sky at one time of the year.”
Hilts nodded. It was more decorative than useful. But his thoughts were still on the chair—and Korsin’s Testament.
“Do you have a knife?”
“Of course,” Iliana said, using the Force to whip a glass blade from a compartment in her boot. The weapon paused in midair, hovering near Hilts’s face.
“Thanks a lot,” he said, taking it and kneeling behind the chair.
Behind the throne. Tentatively, almost fearfully, Hilts slid the tip of the shikkar into the tough skin of the back of the seat. The Sith didn’t outfit their ships for comfort, he saw—but even the rough hide of the command chair was no match for the Keshiri blade. Careful to cut no more than he had to, Hilts withdrew the knife and slipped his hand inside the furnishing.
Continuing to sit, Iliana watched the old man fish around aimlessly, his arm up to his elbow inside the chair. “You look like a fool,” she said.
He felt like one, too—and was about to stop when his hand reached the level of the armrests. “There’s something in here,” he said. “Sewn inside!” He drew his hand out quickly, ripping the upholstery more as he did.
The glass vial contained a single rolled-up sheet of transparent film—flimsier than the thinnest parchment the Keshiri had ever crafted. As he brought it closer to the failing fire, figures began to take shape.
“What’s that writing in?” Iliana asked, suddenly interested.
“It’s the old cant of the Tapani—the language of the humans under Sith rule,” Hilts said. “The language of Korsin’s mother.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I studied it—and she wrote it.” He nudged Iliana’s legs off the armrest and brought the film as close to the fire as he dared. “Takara Korsin. Korsin’s father left her for Jariad’s mother.” His eyes scanned the page. He’d spent the previous year studying a text on the language. Slowly, surely, he worked it out.
“It’s marked personal,” he said. “Brought by a trusted courier to Korsin.” Swallowing, he recited:
“I know you tire of hearing of my visions, my son. If you do as you always have, I expect you won’t read this until your mission is well under way. I’m pleased that you’ve been given command of an important assignment for Naga Sadow—even as it grieves me, as it does all our kind, to know that your victory is for his glory alone.
“Yes, I’ve had another of the visions. I saw our descendants ruling a great people one day—free from the Red Sith. We will have something that will be our own. When they are guided well, I see new horizons opening up—new places to conquer.
“Yaru, only you are wise enough to guide our people. Devore will be his own ruin; I sense strength in his chosen mate, Seelah, but that is not enough. You alone know how to manage the ambitions of many—how to shape your anger, and sculpt it to fit the purpose ahead.
“You do have a purpose. Take care. If you guide our people well, they will always have a mission.”
Hilts drew the letter back from the fire and stared. He didn’t even notice Jaye’s cautious, reverential approach, behind him. “Look at the time imprint,” the shivering Keshiri said, pointing over Hilts’s shoulder to figures along the edge. “He received this right before Omen left for Phaegon.”
Hilts nodded as he considered the words. No, Korsin wouldn’t have wanted anyone to read the message while he was still working for Naga Sadow—hence the hiding place. But for a quarter of a century, Korsin had kept the message always near to him. “I always wondered how he found the strength to go on,” he said.
“Cheerleading claptrap from a doting mother,” Iliana said. “Even Korsin couldn’t have believed this nonsense.”
“Hush, girl.” He glared at her. “She was wise. She saw what we would build. And this proves that our people weren’t destined to live as slaves forever. We have a future.” Hilts stood suddenly and started toward the exit. “Those people out there. If I could read it to them—”
“They won’t listen,” Iliana said. “It’s too far gone. I know I wouldn’t listen.”
Hilts stopped before reaching the doorway. He looked at the letter again and frowned.
Iliana was right. The sentiments were a balm to the spirits—but the people needed a specific cause. Like knocking down a tower and destroying a spaceship.
“What cause would you rally to?” he asked, rolling the letter up and putting it back into its tube.
Iliana answered without a second thought. “Myself.”
“Hmmm.”
He could hear more shouts outside, past the anteroom. The wrecking crew would be farther along now. Hilts and his companions couldn’t stay. Not here, not far atop Omen’s resting place—
“Wait,” Hilts said, looking to the floor.
Jaye shivered beside the cooling brazier. “What is it, Caretaker?”
“This message—this isn’t what Korsin meant.” He looked to the chair where Iliana still sat. “Remember the quote. T
he true power is behind the throne. Not in the throne. Not behind the one who sits in it!”
“You want to argue semantics now?” Iliana shook her head. “No, no. You’re looking for precision in the words of a dying fool—”
“A fool smart enough to conquer a whole native people—and to train a daughter for war under everyone’s noses. No,” Hilts said, rolling the tube with the missive over in his hand. “This message was important to Korsin, but it isn’t what he meant.” He looked back up to the ceiling, where the false stars had faded with the fire. “None of this is right.”
Iliana shifted in the seat. “What do you mean?”
“This place. I can’t believe Korsin spent all his time here,” he said. “You’re correct. This map above—it’s not practical. It’s decorative. Korsin’s focus was on building an empire on Kesh. He wasn’t sitting around looking at the stars!” Hilts stalked around the room. “And Korsin. You saw how he looked in the recording.”
“I remember,” Iliana said, interest growing as the Caretaker grew more animated. “He was bleeding to death.”
“The legend says that Korsin was mortally wounded outside, on the western slope, and made his way back to his chair to record the Testament.”
“Back here,” Jaye said.
“No!” Hilts thought back on the shimmering message he’d seen days earlier. No, there hadn’t been any background in the image. They had been able to see the chair, but no more. “We assumed that he recorded it here, when we found the chair. But look how high we are. Yaru couldn’t have made it up all those stairs with a gaping chest wound. I’m healthy, and I nearly didn’t!”
Iliana stood and looked back at the seat. “I don’t get it. They moved his chair here after he died?” She shrugged. “Why? And where would he have gone instead?”
Hilts stewed for several moments before his aide, now huddled on the floor near the brazier for warmth, piped up. “Perhaps there’s something in the chamber beneath Omen.”
“Beneath?” Hilts blinked in the near-darkness of the rotunda. “There isn’t any chamber beneath Omen. They built the Temple over the ship where it came to rest.”
“But the ship landed on a slope,” Jaye said, “and what we saw was completely level. They shored it up with stonework.” He fidgeted, counting on purple fingertips before looking up. “We entered the Temple through an open passage at the twenty-third step on the staircase from the middle terrace. But we passed a sealed door at the seventh step.” The little Keshiri crossed his arms with satisfaction. “Another chamber, at the base of Omen’s support structure.”
Iliana rolled her eyes. “He counted the steps?”
“He counted the steps,” Hilts said, smirking.
His momentarily improved mood was cut short by a mild shudder, reverberating through the floor. The impromptu allies outside were getting closer to their goal. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go!”
4
It hadn’t seen a visitor in nearly two thousand years—and it didn’t look like it had seen much traffic when people had lived here, either. Unlike Omen’s resting place above them and the celestial dome atop it all, this lower level wasn’t a shrine, and it wasn’t for show. The narrow hallway through the darkness lacked holders for glow rods, and compared with the ornate doors elsewhere, the entrance to the octagonal room was positively modest.
Hilts and his companions had entered the catacombs after slipping past confusion on the plaza. Cables had snapped, temporarily thwarting Edell’s plan to collapse the tower onto Omen—but Hilts knew they’d figure it out sooner or later. He had to figure out what Korsin had meant sooner.
Which was difficult in the dark.
“Find some more glow rods,” he ordered. Jaye nodded and scampered out.
Between the few they’d brought and the light from his and Iliana’s lightsabers, they’d been able to recognize the room’s main feature. A massive stone-carved map of Keshtah, their continent, dominated one of the walls; small Lignan crystals had been worked into the design to indicate settlements. It was the planetary equivalent of the sky map, upstairs. One wall had the doorway; the other six held only large, blank slabs of slate the same size as the Keshtah map.
“I don’t like being here,” Iliana said, gripping her lightsaber tightly. “This is a dead end.”
“Dead is right,” Hilts said, looking up. “Yaru Korsin died here. I can feel it.”
Iliana’s eyes narrowed for a moment. “I feel it, too,” she said. “It feels good.”
Hilts ignored her, kneeling at the center of the room and bringing his lightsaber close to the floor. “Ruts,” he said, feeling the stone surface. “Four of them. This is where Yaru Korsin’s chair was kept at night.” He looked to the wall map. “And that’s what it faced.”
“Why wouldn’t they leave Korsin’s chair here after he died?”
“Maybe Nida wanted anyone who entered in the future to think that Yaru spent all his time contemplating the cosmos—and their return.”
Iliana sneered. “Then maybe she should have punched some windows in the room where they kept the ship.”
Hilts stood and walked to the map. Yes, it made sense. This wasn’t a fancy place—it was a place for work, where Korsin plotted the Tribe’s management of their new world. He might have brought only his trusted Keshiri aides here, to work on the map. Looking back, he squinted through the darkness at the other walls. Humongous black slates, pegged to the walls by metal spikes that must have come from Omen. Hilts could imagine Korsin working here, chalking out his plans for the Tribe. If the captain’s chair always faced the map—and he couldn’t imagine otherwise—then nothing was “behind the throne” at all. Just blank stone panels.
He deactivated his lightsaber and stared into the darkness.
What did Korsin mean?
A thought occurring to him, Hilts took a step away from the map—
—only to see a flailing figure hurtle into the room, launched from the hallway by a massive Force push.
“Jaye!” Hilts yelled as the Keshiri landed meters short of the far wall. The old man scrambled to his aide’s side and turned him over—only to see the wounds seared into the clerk’s bare chest.
The work of a lightsaber. Or several.
“I’m sorry, Caretaker,” Jaye said, coughing as life escaped. “I tried … to find … some more glow rods …”
Stunned, Hilts looked to the side, where Iliana had already vaulted into a defensive posture. One after another, the figures they’d seen outside Omen charged into the room, lightsabers in hand.
“Well, well,” Korsin Bentado said, voice dripping with gruesome delight. “So this is where the chief Sister scurried off to!” He raised his truncated left arm. “I’ve been looking for you!”
“You’re not the only one,” barked Neera, alongside Edell and several of his Golden Destiny companions, blocking any escape. “Pretty little menace—it’s time to be done with you!”
“Let’s put her in the tower and watch her plummet,” Bentado said.
“No,” said another, gesturing to a disfigurement that Iliana had evidently delivered. “Let’s chain her to the spot where the hammer will fall!”
“Forget that!” Iliana yelled, poised to move. “We finish this now!”
“Stop!”
The Caretaker’s shout echoed around the room, attracting the newcomers’ attention to him for the first time. Cradling his dead assistant in his arms, he yelled again. “Which one of you did this?”
“What difference does it make?” Bentado’s teeth glistened in the light given off by the glowing weaponry. “He was a Keshiri. His presence profanes this place.”
“What?” Releasing Jaye, Hilts bolted to his feet, feeling anger he hadn’t known since his youth. “The Keshiri helped to build this place. And profane? You’re the ones trying to destroy the Temple, and Omen in it!”
“All life is profane,” Neera said. She’d added some fresh scars since the last time he saw her. “You saw our al
ien masters. You know just how disgusting life can be.”
Hilts took a step toward the party, only to see Edell step to the front. “I know how you feel about this place, Caretaker. But the joke’s on us—all of us. Everything we were ever told about the Tribe is a lie. It’s over. There’s no sense in clinging to places like this. It’s just one more score to settle. We wipe it out—and then one another.”
“This isn’t the end,” Hilts yelled. “This isn’t the end!”
“No,” Edell said, a chill in his voice. “The end already happened. We just didn’t know it.” The warriors surged forward toward the center of the room, bowling Hilts over as they sought to engage Iliana, the more dangerous of their prey.
Tumbling backward, Hilts saw again the blank slabs on the walls, suspended on their metal spikes. For some bizarre reason, at this moment he found himself thinking the thought he’d had just before Jaye had been hurled into the room: Why waste precious metal on hanging chalkboards?
Suddenly he knew!
With a tremendous effort, Hilts yanked at the metal rods through the Force, ripping them from the walls. On six sides of the room, the massive stone panels came loose, falling forward and slamming to the floor. Hilts yanked at Iliana, pulling her clear of one of the falling monoliths.
Thoom! Thoom! Thoom! Thoom! Thoom!
Doom!
Seeing the other warriors reeling from the surprise and impact, Hilts reached his feet first and grabbed a glow rod. Turning it toward the walls facing the map wall, he saw what he expected to see …
… the rest of the world!
Edell Vrai looked at the wall nearest him. “What—what is this?”
“It’s a map of Kesh,” Hilts said, bringing his light close to the display on the far wall. The revealed panels adjacent to the map of Keshtah were blank—but the four panels on the other side of the room depicted a massive continent, dwarfing the place they knew. “It’s a map of Kesh’s far side. It’s the rest of the world!”
Iliana gawked. “But there’s nothing beyond the oceans! They explored everything after Omen arrived!”
Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories Page 21
