Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #7: Pantheon Read online

  No, of course she wouldn’t know, he thought. She’s too young.

  Iliana stared at him. “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” Hilts said, gesturing to the scroll. “I admire your initiative, Iliana Merko. But there’s a reason no one’s tried this before. You wouldn’t know, unless you’d been here for a Testament reading—or spoken with someone who was.”

  “What in blazes are you talking about?”

  Slowly so as not to cause alarm, Hilts stepped to the right of the Sandpipes and approached a covered pedestal. “You see, I don’t read Korsin’s Testament. The Caretakers never do.”

  Iliana watched, puzzled, as he returned with something wrapped in rich fabric. “Then who reads it?”

  “Yaru Korsin does.” Hilts pulled back the cloth, revealing a small pyramid-shaped object. A device—in a city that had none …

  Chapter Two

  “This … is amazing.”

  “It’s not good, Caretaker.”

  “I didn’t say it was,” Hilts responded to his aide. “But it’s still amazing.”

  As Kesh’s sun cast its first rays onto the city, Hilts and Jaye looked down upon the palace grounds from the balcony. They’d never seen the city so alive. A writhing carpet of humans and Keshiri blanketed what had once been the Circle Eternal, with people setting up portable shelters for protection against volcanic rain.

  Celebrants began gathering the day after Iliana and her warriors had entered the palace, all staking locations in preparation for the Festival of Nida’s Rise. None of the regular citizens would be allowed in for the Testament reading, but it didn’t seem to matter. “This is a planet that needs a party,” Hilts said.

  “They want a leader,” Jaye responded. Dark eyes looked up at the Caretaker. “That’s what I heard Iliana saying. All the humans hope some guidance will come from the Grand Lord’s words.”

  Hilts chortled. “Well, at least they’ll be his words.” He shot a glance back into the palace, where Iliana and her companions stared in stupefaction at the ornate pyramid. “They’ll never even figure out how to turn it on.” That much was true, Hilts remembered; he had barely gotten the thing working during the last Testament Day, twenty-five years earlier. His predecessor had described it as a recording device, and had passed to him the ancient secret for activating it—but it had taken four tries for Hilts to get it right on the appointed day. He wondered if something was wrong with it. Would it play this year?

  No matter. He had played the last four days pretty well, Hilts thought. To buy time, he’d lied to Iliana that the device only activated on Testament Day. That hadn’t stopped the arrogant woman from fiddling with it, to no avail—but the ploy had brought the relief he’d hoped for. Along with the revelers, Iliana’s rivals had entered Tahv far ahead of schedule, evidently attracted by their spies’ reports that the Sisters of Seelah had taken the palace. Now, out there in the encampments flew the banners of the Korsinites, the Golden Destiny, Force 57, and countless other factions. Seelah’s vanguard had taken station outside the palace entrance, but it wasn’t clear how long they could bar entry with their opponents’ numbers growing. With eight days remaining before Testament Day, the blood enemies had held off on violence, instead using the mass public gathering as a chance to proselytize. Nida’s Rise had become a festival of blather.

  “Looking for a leader in this bunch,” Hilts said. “May the dark side help us all.”

  “The conjunction,” Jaye said. Hilts was afraid he was about to hear another round about Jaye’s theory, and what today really was, when the Keshiri sighed and looked directly at him. “Caretaker, I’ll never understand why you never challenged to rule the Tribe. You’re wiser in the ways of the ancient Protectors than anyone.”

  “Too wise,” Hilts said, amused. “These are the days of the Flagrant Fool, my friend. Knowledgeable men like us can’t get far.”

  “But the Tribe teaches that every free man or woman can grow up to become Grand Lord.”

  “Which is a fine thing for me to believe,” Hilts said. “But if you believe it, it isn’t as fine. And if those fools out there believe it as well,” he continued, gesturing to the crowd, “it becomes a horrible thing. Your opportunity lies in my failure.” He smirked. “And what’s this ‘Tribe teaches’? No one agrees on what the Tribe is even about anymore.” The schooling system had been just another victim of the upheaval. Under Korsin and his successors, people had worked together. But as individuals increasingly sought shortcuts to sole power, Sith society—if it could be called that—had fallen apart. Hilts clapped his hand on the young aide’s shoulder. “No, it’s too late. Like Donellan, time has passed me by.”

  “I don’t agree—”

  “Listen, Jaye. When a man of advancing years tells you something is true, either believe him, or nod politely,” Hilts said, stepping away from the railing. “The last thing you want to do is shake his faith in his omniscience.”

  “Even if he’s wrong?”

  “Especially if he’s wrong.” He turned to step back inside the palace. “And speaking of fools …”

  Inside, Iliana continued to paw at the little pyramid. Only two of her companions remained, the rest having departed to guard the entrance.

  “If it’s some kind of recording device,” Iliana said, “it must have a power source. Perhaps a Lignan crystal.”

  “If you find out how it works,” Hilts said, “you’ll be one for the historical records yourself.” He crossed to an unthreatening position near the Sandpipes. After locking his workers in another room, Iliana had kept the caretaker and his assistant in the immediate area, ready to answer questions. Hilts wasn’t going anywhere, anyway. The whole thing had become an amusing spectacle—and the players, fun to watch.

  He’d found Iliana a fetching woman, if completely venal and untrustworthy. Hilts had never taken a mate, partially because of his dead-end station, but also because he knew that Sith didn’t know how to share. He’d seen it in the histories time and again: all that envy and plotting, even within families. No wonder Yaru Korsin had decreed that the consorts of expired Grand Lords needed to be put to death. Poison had no place in the bedchamber.

  Not that Iliana knew it. Now, as she had once the day before, Iliana stepped toward him and looked into his eyes with sudden warmth. “Caretaker, are you sure there’s no way to see the recording now—to alter it?” Her gloved hand brushed gently against his arm.

  “Gloyd’s blood, girl! I’m twice your age, at least,” Hilts said. He looked at her with incredulity. “You are a Sister of Seelah.”

  Glaring, she shrank back. “And you’re a festering old wart!”

  “That’s more like it. Can we get down to facts now? Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to doctor the message on here. And I don’t want to!” He turned away from her and gestured to the paintings on the atrium walls, depicting the arrival of the travelers from the skies. “This gadget is our only functioning link to that past, to how we came to be. I wouldn’t tamper with it if my life depended on it.”

  “How about someone else’s?”

  Hilts heard the sharp hiss of Iliana’s lightsaber being activated. Turning cautiously, he saw that her companions had taken Jaye by the arms. “Now, there’s no need for that.”

  “I think there is. Start taking apart the device, Caretaker. And while you do,” Iliana said, “we’re going to take this Keshiri apart. There might be something of him left, if you work fast enough.”

  Hilts’s eyes alternated between his writhing, panicked assistant and the gleaming widget. He didn’t even know where to begin, but he had to do something. Reluctantly, he took the small pyramid in hand—

  —and nearly dropped it when several figures crashed through the glass windows above, plummeting into the atrium. Dressed in the ancient uvak-leather garb of the Skyborn Rangers, the new arrivals hit the marble surface behind Jaye’s captors and ignited their lightsabers. At the same time, several of Iliana’s warriors from outside entered, retreating fr
om the charge of a grisly-looking mob of misanthropes. Her weapon already drawn, Iliana sprang to her allies’ defense, releasing Jaye, who dived for the floor near Hilts’s feet.

  “Now, boy!” Holding his aide’s tunic in one hand and the recorder in the other, Hilts tumbled toward the Sandpipes, away from the fray. Behind them, crimson energy crackled, tearing into Sith flesh. There were two groups of assailants after Iliana, he realized.

  Recognizing who they were, Hilts realized what he had to do.

  “Human trash!” Iliana screamed with fury as she locked lightsabers with a scarred behemoth of a woman. “Traitorous wench!” yelled a bald mountain of male anger, one of the leather-armored arrivals from above. Clashing, the combatants seemed as interested in insulting their enemies as striking them. So much so that in between blows, they chanced to hear—

  “Hey! Up here!”

  Heads turned to the glass contraption towering near the north wall. The rumpled Hilts clung to the maintenance ladder by the Sandpipes, with a terrified Jaye on the rungs just beneath. Holding the recording device in one hand, the Caretaker swallowed hard and spoke.

  “Factions of Kesh—invited guests—welcome. Um … you’re all early.”

  Chapter Three

  They just had to knock out the windows, Hilts thought. Thirty years he’d spent trying to keep his portion of the capital building from falling apart. The warring oafs had just set him and his staff back another thirty years—provided he survived the afternoon.

  “I have to say I’m surprised to see you all here,” Hilts said, stepping over shards to the center of the room. The warriors had stepped back from one another but still held their lightsabers before them, leaving a wedge of space in between for him and Jaye. “It’s eight days until Testament Day. But this is a palace. I guess we have some extra rooms here for you—”

  “Shut up, old man!” The beefy black-haired woman with all the scars took a step forward and pointed at Iliana. “We want to know why she’s here!”

  Hilts looked to see Iliana and her companions, some bloodied from the battle, backed up against the Sandpipes, ready for their last stand. Iliana’s face flashed with defiance. “Don’t answer that cretin, Hilts!”

  “Don’t you raise your voice in this place, woman!” The hulking bald man with a black mustache stepped forth from his leather-clad coterie and made an unkind gesture to Iliana. “The house of Korsin was no place for Seelah—and no place for you!”

  Seeing the line of warriors behind Iliana poised to move, Hilts quickly stepped between them and the giant. “You—you’re Korsinite League, right?”

  “I am Korsin Bentado,” the shiny-headed man said, his deep voice thundering in the chamber. He gestured to either side. “This is Korsin Vandoz, and you know Korsin Immera from the last Testament reading. We’ve come, Caretaker, to celebrate the lives of Yaru and Nida Korsin at this grand and celestial time. We hope that all is ready—”

  “Well, it will—”

  “—and we hope that you can show the misled among us the truth of the Testament. That the leader came from beyond, that the Tribe is the body of the leader, and that those who would imperil the body deserve neither mercy nor life,” Bentado said. He gazed reverentially at the statue Iliana had once mocked and bowed his head. “One becomes all, and all one. Korsin now, Korsin forever.”

  “Whatever you say,” Hilts said. Turning, he shot a surreptitious look at Jaye and shook his head. Hilts knew these people well. A former slave had founded the Korsinite League a century earlier, taking Korsin as a title for himself, separate from the hierarchy of Lords. Emancipated, he patterned his life after those led by the first Grand Lord and his successor daughter; as he declared, any worthy could aspire to Korsin-ness, just as he had. His followers took it to heart—and, being Sith, decided they could just as easily adopt the title for themselves. Which they all did, over the movement founder’s complaints—and, eventually, his dead body. Now there were hundreds of self-named Korsins of either sex running about, chanting mantras and declaring their empires of one to the crowd at large. To strike up a conversation with a Korsinite was to risk death by cognitive dissonance.

  “I still want to know why that—that woman has been allowed in here!” The scar-faced female slapped a bare hand on Hilts’s shoulder and twirled him around. Hilts realized with a start that the hand had only three webbed fingers.

  “You’re Force Fifty-seven, I take it.”

  “Obviously!” Her companions jostled behind her, growling ferally. The woman Neera was in fact the least gruesome of the bunch, Hilts saw. No one knew much about the original 57; Seelah Korsin had evidently taken steps to erase that faction’s existence from memory. But the Keshiri tales spoke of those early Omen crew members as deformed in some way, the opposite of Seelah’s perfect human specimens.

  The modern Force 57 was far more than fifty-seven in number; looking at Neera’s allies, Hilts wondered if every misshapen human living on Kesh had found his or her way into the ranks. They were easy to pick out when they ventured near the capital; even those least blemished by birth had dozens of self-inflicted scars. Fifty-seven, Hilts imagined, although he had never had the opportunity or desire to count.

  “Seelah banished our kind, so she could have her blissful perfection,” Neera yelled, gesturing to the walls. “This place is digusting! You see who’s missing from these paintings, don’t you? Where’s Ravilan, the leader of the Different Ones? Why, they don’t even bother to show Gloyd—the one the Korsins let live, like a pet!” She spat on the marble. “Your precious Pantheon is missing members!”

  “You are, too!” Iliana shot back. “Seelah was right to purge the defectives! And we’re going to do it again!” The Sisters surged forward—only to be blocked by Hilts.

  “People, people!” Looking back, Hilts saw that his triangle of neutral ground had shrunk. “This isn’t the place for this!”

  “You’re absolutely right, Caretaker,” Korsin Bentado said, tightening the fasteners on his lightsaber hand’s glove. “The defilers must pay the penalty. We will finish this battle here and now—and then outside, where the other factions are gathered. The blood will sanctify this place. The Korsinite League will be triumphant—and in eight days, we alone will hear Yaru Korsin’s blessings.”

  Cowering near his master, Jaye squeaked. “But there are thousands of people out there!”

  “If that’s how it has to be.”

  “It doesn’t have to be this way!” Hilts yelled. Remembering the recording device, he raised it into the air. “You’re here for the reading. We could do it now!”

  Iliana glared at him. “You said it only activated on Testament Day!”

  Hilts looked back at her and shrugged. “I’m Sith. I lied.”

  “The League will not accept a reading of the Testament on any day besides the anniversary,” Bentado said, golden eyes glaring under bushy black brows. “Would you be branded a heretic, Caretaker, like these others?” The line began to move again behind him. “We’ll hear the founder in eight days—alone!”

  Seeing the combatants surge forward, Hilts felt Jaye clinging tightly to him. In a flash he made a connection.

  Eight days.

  “Jaye! Your calculations!” Pulling the Keshiri’s head from his chest, Hilts yelled urgently. “Your calculations about the Sandpipes!”

  The aide looked up, tears of panic flowing freely. “Now? But you said no one would be interested in—”

  “Now, Jaye!” he rasped. “Tell them!”

  Quaking in terror, the little Keshiri released his master and addressed the assemblage. “Begging your Lordships’ pardons—”

  “We’re not all Lords, Keshiri!”

  Jaye nearly fell over at Neera’s response. His humongous black eyes darted back to Hilts, who mouthed urgently: Say it!

  “Begging your pardons, but when the Protectors landed, they brought their Standard Calendar, which we Keshiri adopted, regardless of our different length of day and year—”
/>   Another lightsaber ignited in the crowd.

  “—and we calibrated our Sandpipes to your magical chrono, aboard Omen. When the mountain temple was sealed and Omen abandoned, bearers brought the Sandpipes here, still keeping time—”

  Two more lightsabers, and more movement.

  “—but we found years ago that the sand didn’t flow through the pipes at the same speed on the mainland as up on the mountain.” Red energy shining in his face, Jaye swallowed. “It runs slower.”

  Bentado raised his weapon—and an eyebrow. “How much slower?”

  “One second slower,” Jaye said, voice creaking. “Your Standard Day is really a second shorter than what we’ve been using all this time.”

  Neera and the 57s rumbled with impatience. “What the blazes difference does that make?”

  Hilts clenched his fists and looked at Jaye. “Tell them!”

  “Over two thousand years? It makes eight days’ difference. Which means—”

  “Which means,” Hilts said, stepping beside his quivering aide, “that by our founders’ true timekeeping, Testament Day is today. And the Festival of Nida’s Rise really begins today, as well.” He looked to Iliana and lowered his voice. “But Yaru’s day is the important one.”

  Bentado stomped toward the pair and raged. “This is preposterous!” He grabbed Jaye by the wrist. “You’re telling me this Keshiri fool counted all the seconds since practically when Omen landed? That must be ten million—”

  “The word in your language is billion,” Jaye croaked. “And it’s more than sixty.”

  Iliana stepped forward—and lowered her lightsaber. “He’s telling the truth,” she said. “I don’t see any deception in him. Nor much of anything else.”

  Bentado looked back to his allies, who nodded in silence. Even the wretched 57s had paused.

  Hilts looked at the Keshiri and marveled. Well done. Now shut up!

  “The reading is on,” Hilts said. “I declare the Pantheon’s Peace.” Holding the recording device aloft, he looked from one of the faction leaders to another. “Deactivate your weapons—and call in any of your rival leaders from outside,” he said. “I can’t tell you people how to run your affairs. Maybe Yaru Korsin can.”