“What’s his condition … whatever your name is?”
“I am Tellpah, high one,” the Keshiri scholar responded. “Saber Ulbrick has many splinters in his leg.”
“We may have to move quickly. Can he walk?”
Ulbrick gritted his teeth in pain. “Not easily, High Lord,” the young Sith said. “I don’t think so.”
Edell looked at the warrior and then back at Quarra. He smiled at her—and spun, igniting his lightsaber and decapitating Ulbrick with a crimson flash. Tellpah avoided the stroke that wasn’t meant for him, but the Keshiri aide couldn’t avoid the mess.
“Hide the body,” Edell ordered, deactivating his weapon. This spot was sheltered from sight of the harbor, so no one had been able to see the act—other than his intended audience.
Quarra sputtered in horror. “He was one of your own!”
“Yes,” Edell said mildly as he passed through the gate. “Don’t forget that.” He looked back at his remaining trio of companions. “Put the male downstairs in the tower. I’m going to the top to have a look around.”
“Others will be here soon,” Peppin said.
“Then we do it quickly,” he said. “We have to know what’s about. Bind the woman—and bring her upstairs, too. She may be able to tell me what I’m looking at!”
A lightsaber!
Bound and sitting against Jogan’s overturned workbench, Quarra stole glances at the Sith leader rummaging in the belfry—and at the stubby weapon attached to his belt, gently reflecting the light from the glow lamp he carried. Lightsabers had been described in the Keshtah Chronicles, and there was even a rumor that one existed in Alanciar, brought there by the Herald, long ago. If such a thing was, it sat in the most secret archives of the land, buried underground beside the War Cabinet’s forward headquarters in Sus’mintri. She wondered if the relic still worked, as the human’s weapon had. A magical pillar of energy, which did not fall apart on striking something.
Surely the Sith were the Destructors of legend. Or their minions. Or their creations.
The Chronicles had also described humans, but nothing could have prepared her for the differences among humans. Such variety in skin tones and hair color, compared with the purple-complected Keshiri. It was hard to believe Edell, with his sun-colored hair, belonged to the same species as the female Peppin and her shocking red mane. They weren’t unattractive as monsters went, but the Chronicles had warned the Alanciari about that fact, too.
The Sith leader loomed impatiently over his assistant. “Have you found anything, Tellpah?”
“No, High Lord,” the older male replied, sifting notes on the floor not far from where she sat. Tellpah unnerved Quarra most of all. He was Keshiri, and yet not quite, with a lower forehead and a slightly narrower face. Not a distant branch of the Keshiri tree, but one removed from hers. Had the humans all come from different places, to look so distinct?
And why would a Keshiri be here, helping the Sith that enslaved him?
She whispered. “You don’t have to obey them, Tellpah. Keshiri here are free!”
Tellpah looked at her blankly, uncomprehending.
“Ignore her,” Edell barked. “I need to know the proper signal to send!”
Quarra smirked. On reaching the belfry, Edell had gone from balcony to balcony, studying the nighttime scene outside. It had clearly unnerved him. Only ocean blackness to the west and south; armed searchers on the harbor to the north. And along the peninsula to the east, troops were mustering outside the gates of the fortress at Garrow’s Neck, preparing to head up the trail toward them. From what the Sith said, the fireglobes had been lit there and at all the fortresses to the north, to aid the scouring forces. A good sign, she thought. The Alanciari were no longer afraid of more airships coming in, and were mopping up.
The only thing that had seemed to go the Sith leader’s way was the arrival of two more humans, warriors evidently cast out from the airship just as he was. They’d emerged, uninjured, from the harbor near the western tip of Point Defiance, and brought his number up to six. But if he wanted to prevent the arrival of the troops from the east, his time was running out.
“The signal, Tellpah! The signal!”
“I told you before, I know the all-clear code,” Quarra piped up.
Standing outside by the signal apparatus, Edell looked in at her and sneered. “I don’t think I’d trust the signal you’d send.”
“Your choice,” she said. He’d brought her upstairs thinking that by having Jogan in his power, he’d get her cooperation. But even with his leverage, the Sith were nothing if not suspicious, she saw.
Edell stomped back into the belfry and stared angrily at the stand with the signal cylinders. In an outburst of Force power, he smashed it against the stone wall.
Good, she thought. He’s cracking.
“I am not,” he said, turning to face the south. Through the open doorway, he saw something far on the horizon. He quickly stepped out. “Tellpah, over here. You see what I see?”
The Keshiri slave joined his master at the ledge. “A ship, sir!”
Quarra winced. Only Shore Guard vessels worked the western sea, but the harvester fleet worked the coral banks in the Southern Passage. Dropping massive stone kedges to fight the fast current, the ships and their divers went out for weeks at a time. They weren’t supposed to work this far west, she knew—but captains behind on harvesting their quotas of seafood were known to cut corners.
“It’s good,” Edell said, pointing southeast. “You see where it is? I bet they can’t see the signal tower on that fortress near us at all.” He slapped Tellpah on the shoulder. “Quickly, let’s go. Get her downstairs!”
Forcing Quarra up, the slave tightened the cord binding her wrists behind her back and pushed her ahead. Quarra looked down into the gaping maw of the stairwell—and saw an opportunity. It would be easy to step off and plunge to her death. It was, in horrible fact, her responsibility now. No Alanciari could assist the Sith in their invasion plans. She’d already given too much away, just by opening her mouth. She took a step into the air, her boot hovering over the emptiness. Something had to be done—
No. She thought of her children at home—and of Jogan, hurt and perhaps dying downstairs. No, there had to be a reason she’d been drawn here now, of all times. And there was hope. Troops were coming. Her marriage might not survive their arrival, but neither would the murderous humans. Newly determined, she tromped down the stairs, followed by Tellpah and his master.
The recently arrived warriors emerged from the basement, arms laden with books and scrolls, just as Jogan had been. “Archives, High Lord!”
“Out here?” Edell regarded the parchment stash. “Bring them. They could be of use.”
Quarra barely stifled a laugh. She imagined what was in Jogan’s library. Half of them were probably adventure stories or romances. Suddenly reminded, she looked to the side. From his living quarters, Jogan groaned.
Edell shoved her toward Jogan’s room. “Don’t get comfortable.”
Jogan certainly wasn’t comfortable, she saw. The Sith had dumped him on the floor, completely ignoring his bed. But there was more color in his face now. He’d slipped into shock when the uvak struck him; it had taken all her Force skills to keep him alive. She knelt beside him. With her hands tied behind her, all she could do was kiss his bruised cheek.
Groggily, Jogan recognized her. “This is not how I imagined getting you into my bedroom,” he said, slurring his words.
“Hush, now.”
Jogan heard the alien voices outside and tried to rise, fighting the pain. She nudged him back down. He puffed, spent from the effort. “Are those … the Sith?”
“Yes,” she whispered, caressing the side of his face with hers. “But they’re not happy right now. We just have to wait—”
“No more waiting,” said Edell, standing in the doorway above them. He smirked. “A shame to interrupt such a loving pair. But we found your boat outside. We’re about to take anoth
er trip—all of us!”
6
The clouds broke, and the sun again mirrored through the glass spires of Tahv.
“I can’t see a cursed thing,” the old man said, shielding his eyes. “All this blasted glass wasn’t such a good idea!”
“Yes, Grand Lord.” A solemn Keshiri clapped her hands, and another aide pulled a silken cord. On the roof of the capitol building, workers on standby lowered dark curtains over the stained-glass windows of the atrium dome.
“Too hot in here,” their master growled, wiping nonexistent sweat from his ragged brow. “I’m going to my office.”
“Yes, Grand Lord.” The attendants bearing the fans stepped back into the alcoves, allowing him to pass. Varner Hilts, supreme leader of the Lost Tribe of the Sith on Kesh, was heading back to the little room where he’d spent half his life. And why not? He was still Caretaker as well as Grand Lord. The room was his—as all rooms were now. If he wanted to sit in front of an old desk buried under ancient texts and sip his brew, he could.
Lately, all he’d wanted was privacy. His major responsibilities, as he saw them, were long since discharged. He’d returned the Tribe to stability and restored the building he’d loved to its former splendor. The rest was trivial. The octogenarian had lost interest in the day-to-day running of the Tribe, and in the great mission he had set his people upon twenty-five years earlier. There were others to handle those things.
His consort, Iliana, still robust at forty-nine, had her hands full managing politics. The Caretaker Grand Lord was still a revered figure for most, but among the Sith, even a loaf of bread would develop enemies if placed upon a throne. No one had been so irreverent as to challenge him directly, but Hilts wasn’t so naïve as to think he’d always be given a pass. Though if he got any older, he probably wouldn’t be able to tell the blade that struck him from any of his other pains.
But those in power are the makers of traditions—and there, Hilts found the unique opportunity that got him up in the mornings. A quarter century had passed since the last reading of Yaru Korsin’s Testament in Tahv, and it was time for it again. But with the destruction of the ancient recording device, the spectral Korsin would never again deliver the message aloud. Despite the damage to the archives during the horrible riots of the Great Crisis, the text of the Testament still existed. The libraries in Orreg and Elvarnos had escaped total destruction, and if nothing else Hilts knew the speech by heart. But that same heart—still reasonably strong, after all these years—told him that Korsin’s dying message was no longer appropriate to the moment, and for his people.
So Hilts and a team of scribes had set to work on a new speech. Part manifesto, reminding listeners of what it meant to be Sith; part legal document, restating the hierarchy of High Lords, Lords, and Sabers and reaffirming the practices surrounding succession. But the meat of the message, and the thing that excited the aged ruler most, was a section recounting the lineage of the humans of Kesh, all the way back to the Tapani members of House Nidantha. For Hilts, it represented his crowning achievement, beyond even his Grand Lordship.
Soon after the Hilts Restoration began, he and other researchers had started to place everything they’d recently uncovered in context, from the fragmented orders of Naga Sadow to Takara Korsin’s missive to her son. There had always been puzzling references in the ancient writings from the original Omen survivors; now they all made sense. The humans of the Tribe were important in the galactic scheme—and, shockingly, they were a people far older than the Sith movement itself.
Through the styluses of Keshiri writers more eloquent than he, what had been a simple recounting of events became poetry calculated to instill the Tribe with pride. Blocked from supremacy in the Tapani sector, the members of House Nidantha had struck out to find a new, greater destiny on their own—only to become trapped and enslaved by the Sith of the Stygian Caldera. But the Tribe’s ancestors would not be kept low, especially not after they learned the empowering philosophies of the Sith and the workings of the dark side of the Force. Yes, the Omen crew’s arrival on Kesh had been every bit as accidental as their Tapani forebears’ arrival in Sith space—but there were no accidents. The first years of the Tribe on Kesh had been, in effect, a do-over, in which the humans became the rulers and slavers—and in which the Red Sith were quickly and rightfully extinguished. If only the Tapani refugees had already known the Force when they arrived in the Stygian Caldera. How different history might have been!
No matter: the Tribe was making its own history now. Whatever had become of Naga Sadow and his kind during the last two thousand years, the people that would eventually leave Kesh would be independent. A new Sith, born of an old people. Hilts had been tempted to use his True Testament to publicly dub the Tribe members Nidanthans, but he’d thought better of it. They may have started out as part of an interstellar trading house, but their identity now was in what they’d done since arriving.
Years earlier, the Lost Tribe term had carried the ring of failure. Now the words reminded all of what they had already achieved. In becoming lost, the Tribe had found so much more.
“It’s good,” Hilts said, parchment crackling in his pale hands. “Good enough.” He set the pages down atop the only level spot. Too bad you couldn’t be here for this, Jaye. You always liked my stories.
“Varner, you look like the wrong end of an uvak!”
“Eh?”
“I don’t understand,” Iliana Hilts said, billowing in. Wearing a satiny gown laden with gems, the redhead pinched his cheeks and frowned. “We bring in the best skin specialists for you—”
“I banished them from the realm,” he said, rubbing his jaw. “They kept wanting to plant trees in my pores.”
“It’s an organic poultice, Varner. They’re experts. They groom all the best people.”
“Well, now they’re grooming icebergs.”
Shoving his head down, she straightened his collar. “Does the irascible-ruler routine amuse the Keshiri? Because it doesn’t work with me.”
“Nothing works with you, my dear.” He grinned up at her through ceramic teeth. “It’s one of the truths on which I depend.”
He never could tell whether Iliana loved him or hated him. But after all these years, it didn’t really matter. They worked. He doubted many couples on Kesh could say the same. Sure, it had taken the threat of death to wake them to a common interest. He couldn’t fight for himself, and as consort, she would be allowed to live only while he stayed alive. But maybe that was what Sith relationships required.
“Get up,” she said, yanking his rickety chair backward so fast he nearly fell from it. “You’re needed in the throne room.”
“Again? I’d rather lick the floor.” He gestured to the almost-finished tract on the desk. “I’m needed here. This is where I can be effective.”
Iliana sighed. “More words.” Shoving her hands under his arms, she forced him to stand. “They’re all you’re about. You were always a poor Sith. Where’s your anger, your envy?”
“I grow angry every time I look in the mirror—and I envy every time I see someone shy of seventy.”
She straightened his tunic and bit her lip. “This will have to do. The High Lord Korsin Bentado is requesting an audience.”
Hilts groaned. “I knew I’d lived too long.” He stared forlornly at the parchment. He’d never get done at this rate. “Just send him away.”
“Nothing would make me happier,” Iliana said, rolling her eyes. “But you put him in charge of the invasion force.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I told you to. A Bentado who’s busy is better than a Bentado wandering around, finding cults to start.” She shrugged. “But mostly, because I told you to.”
“Bentado,” he said sullenly. The man made his sides hurt. “Edell Vrai, now, there’s a smart man.”
“And you sent him on the expedition, Varner,” she said, prodding him toward the door. “Now, come on. I do everything else around here, but I’m no
t doing this!”
* * *
“Blessings of the dark side to your family, Grand Lord,” Korsin Bentado said.
Sitting in the captain’s chair from Omen, Hilts mumbled an inaudible response. Did the dark side bless things? Imbecile.
“As always, it is an honor to visit this place, this holiest of holies in Tahv,” Bentado said, gesturing around the throne room with his one remaining hand. Yaru Korsin had died before he could ever hold court here, and the long, high-ceilinged room had remained closed until Hilts reopened it. Bentado rattled on. “I stared in wonder outside, before the new glass spires. It proves what I’ve said. The Hilts Restoration only begins on Kesh. But it reaches to the stars, where you will someday restore us all to our rightful place of dominance!”
“Okay.”
High Lord Bentado strutted before eight Sith warriors, all dressed as he was in black leather. Well into his fifties, Bentado looked just as he had in his youth, bald with bushy black facial hair. Hilts suspected he’d had a lot of work done by Iliana’s “specialists.” What kind of man dyes his eyebrows?
“The news we’ve been waiting years for has arrived at last,” Bentado declared. “Squab!”
Bentado faced the great doors, where a hunchbacked Keshiri entered bearing a note. Standing just behind the Grand Lord, Iliana rolled her eyes. “Well,” she whispered in her husband’s shriveled ear, “now we know why it took years to get here.”
“Hush,” Hilts replied, trying not to laugh. It had been their private joke five years earlier, suggesting Squab as Bentado’s aide. The High Lord had feigned delight at the recommendation, readily accepting the deformed Keshiri into his retinue of perfect human specimens. They’d wondered how far he’d take it—and were still wondering. Bentado never showed up without his stunted assistant in tow.
Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories Page 26
