Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #7: Pantheon Page 3

  Chapter Four

  “… when we landed, we were few. Our survival was not guaranteed. The Tribe—what we have become—was the necessary mechanism. Once we knew Kesh held no dangers for us, the only threat came from ourselves …”

  The starship captain sat in his command chair, facing death—and, unbeknownst to him, several of his remote descendants, separated by time. The image of Yaru Korsin flickered in midair, casting eerie shadows through the darkened atrium. It was neither the robust Korsin of the later paintings nor the bug-eyed deity of the Keshiri sculpture who appeared; it was simply a man. A spent warrior-king, clutching his chest and speaking his last.

  “… and just as I had you trained in secret, Nida, there are secrets you must always keep. The true power is behind the throne. Should disaster befall—remember that …”

  Platitudes passed from a ruler to his child, both long dead. Hilts had studied the words for so many years, they had lost their magic for him. True, that first sight long ago of Yaru Korsin, animated, had excited his imagination. But this time was different. Standing behind the device and its projection, he found himself looking not at the ancient figure, but through him, at the gathered listeners. The atrium had been cleared of dead bodies and living warriors that afternoon; now, as darkness fell, only the faction leaders remained, including a dozen-plus brought in from outside. Hilts searched from face to face. Some had that same look of wonder he’d once had; humility was a new concept for most Sith. Others seemed untouched.

  Hilts focused again on Korsin. He’d been dying when he recorded this; bleeding in the seat that had once been the captain’s chair from Omen, he’d hurriedly recorded a message to his daughter, who was busy finishing off the rebels elsewhere on the mountain. Between coughs, the spectral Korsin spoke of the Tribe’s hierarchy, and how the structure should be managed to prevent uprisings like the one that ultimately killed him. He’d just spoken the segment about killing dead Grand Lord’s spouses and banishing Seelah; Hilts could still feel the rage coming from Iliana.

  “… that should hold the Tribe for the long term, but you’ll want to begin bringing your own people in at the Lord level. I have a few suggestions, depending on who survives …”

  “This is the boring part,” Iliana snapped. Hilts looked to his shoes. She was right. For all the regard placed on the document, he knew it included a lot of logistical detail. Several of the leaders paid rapt attention, listening to Korsin speak of their adopted intellectual forebears, but for the others it was tedium.

  Looking at the restive members, Hilts wondered about his next move. He was alone now; Jaye had been kicked outside along with his fellow workers before the reading began. That was good for them, for the moment. But the Pantheon’s Peace would conclude when the recording did—and it didn’t look like the words were leading any toward a settlement. How could he stay alive—much less protect his staff and position—if this solved nothing? Never mind the Tribe’s future, Hilts thought. What about mine?

  After several minutes, Korsin’s speech slowed. The mortal wound taking its toll, the words turned personal. Hilts looked up again, newly fascinated by the momentary connection with a man two thousand years old.

  “… Nida, my daughter, you’re more than the only good thing to come from Seelah. You’re the future of the Sith on this planet. It wasn’t … our choice to live here. But it is … our choice not to die here. That choice … will be made by you …”

  Korsin slumped in his chair. The image froze.

  “Is that all?” Iliana said.

  Hilts looked at her, unsurprised that she’d won the race to speak first. “That’s all.” He stepped to the recording device.

  “It’s enough,” Korsin Bentado said reverently. “You’ve just heard a great leader say it. There can only be one power structure—the one he invented. The one my people will represent. No compromise.”

  “You’re wrong” came another voice. Hilts saw it belonged to the leader of the Golden Destiny, a group obsessed with the stellar aspects of the Tribe’s origin. “I heard a great conqueror describe a powerful people. We didn’t even intend to come here—yet we subdued this world instantly. Every human in the galaxy likely has his own planetary kingdom! We must stop fighting, reopen the temple, and return to the stars!”

  Hilts shook his head as the quarrels began anew. There were no lightsabers, yet; the leaders were too busy telling one another what they had just all heard. But it was only a matter of time. He absently fiddled with the recorder. He’d gotten it started more easily this time, but for some reason it wasn’t deactivating properly.

  Static appeared—and then something else. Fleeting images, interlaced with the scene of the expired Grand Lord.

  “There’s something here,” Hilts said, adjusting the device. “Underneath.”

  A palimpsest. He’d heard Keshiri artists speak of the concept. Occasionally, a second work was painted over an earlier version, using the same canvas. The concept had no meaning in sculpture—and wasn’t the projected image a living sculpture? But still, something was there. Maybe when Korsin used the device to record his message, there had already been another one on it!

  He rattled the few controls he understood again …

  … and a monster appeared.

  “This is your liege, Naga Sadow, speaking to the captain Yaru Korsin!”

  The leaders turned instantly from their arguments on hearing the gravelly voice. It belonged to something not entirely human, clad in the robes of a Sith ruler. Sadow’s face had a reddish cast, terminating in two pointed tentacles that writhed when he spoke. Veins bulged from his bald cranium like mountain ranges.

  And as he spoke, he gestured with hands—such hands!—tipped with talons an uvak might have.

  Neera of Force 57 spoke first. “What—is that thing?”

  “Alongside Saes and the Harbinger, you are decreed to deliver the mining team belonging to your sibling, Devore, to Phaegon. You will obtain Lignan crystals for my cause and return to Kirrek.”

  Hilts had to rub his eyes. The language was theirs, if heavily accented. But what was speaking it? Aside from the Keshiri, there was no record of there being any other sentient species in the universe.

  And certainly not one that gave orders to humans.

  “For this mission, I dispatch to you one you have worked with before, Ravilan Wroth, and his Massassi warriors.”

  The image changed—and if the visage of Naga Sadow startled the viewers, the appearance of the one called Ravilan and his escort evoked audible gasps. His skin fully crimson, Ravilan looked even less human than Sadow, with protruding eyebrow stalks to go along with even longer facial tendrils. And the lumbering blood-colored monstrosities standing behind Ravilan were grotesque beyond description.

  The image flickered, and Naga Sadow reappeared.

  “I have sent for your brother, Devore, to inform him that you will be in charge. But remember that you are all subject to my law and whim. You may have more freedom of action than other Sith allow their slaves—but the greatest thing your kind can aspire to is competence in my service. And that is what I demand of you. Your work will create my glory. Begin your preparations. Succeed in my name. Fail me—and die.”

  The image vanished, leaving the atrium in near-darkness. Starlight filtered in through the broken windows above.

  Finally, Iliana spoke. “What was that?”

  “A message,” Hilts said, cautiously fingering the device. “An earlier message. I think that Korsin recorded over it—that we weren’t supposed to see it.” The gadget had been testy in recent activations. Maybe it had finally failed to do what Korsin intended. He exhaled and looked up to the skylights. “I think that was, as he said, Naga Sadow.”

  The crowd erupted in disbelief, voiced loudest by Korsin Bentado. “Naga Sadow is just a name from folktales—‘Korsin’s celestial ally.’ That—that thing acted like it owned the Omen. And the crew!”

  “They weren’t conquerors,” Iliana said acidly. “
They were diggers in the dirt. And the great Yaru Korsin was just a delivery boy!”

  The gruesome outcasts of Force 57 seemed the most horrified of all, having seen the true face of Ravilan and his outcasts. “This—this is not Sith,” Neera said, almost in a whisper. “This is madness.”

  Hilts was speechless. All the little mysteries from their history and all the redacted sections of texts suddenly made sense, if this could be called sense. Yaru Korsin and the entire founding pantheon had been slaves—to that thing?

  “No wonder Seelah Korsin wanted us all to be pure specimens,” Iliana said, standing before the others. “She was sanctifying the race.”

  Korsin Bentada was pacing. “No, it can’t be. It can’t be.” He glared at Hilts. “You! Caretaker! The Sisters got to you earlier. Did you tamper with that?”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” Hilts said. He lifted the projector from the floor and placed it back on its pedestal.

  “Then … what does this mean?”

  “It means we’re not just the Tribe,” Hilts said. “We’re a Lost Tribe.” He nearly spat the adjective. It was nothing to be proud of. “We’re missing. We didn’t come on our own; we were sent, and not sent here. But once we crashed, Korsin stayed—because he didn’t want to go back and face that.”

  The murmurs grew louder. Who would blame Korsin? But that made them all something terrible indeed.

  Runaway slaves.

  In a flash, Iliana ignited her lightsaber and lunged. Hilts stumbled, certain she was coming for him. Instead, her weapon found its home in the recording device, bisecting it and the pedestal it sat upon.

  Hilts fumbled toward the sparking halves of the gadget. “What did you do that for?”

  “We can’t let anyone know,” Iliana said to the others, her voice grave. “They never wanted us to know. Seelah must have forbidden any records of what Ravilan’s people really were. It’s why Korsin recorded over the message. We have to keep this secret.”

  Hilts looked up at her. “I don’t see how—”

  “We can’t ever let the Keshiri know!” Korsin Bentado said, the stoic giant now Jaye’s equal for nervousness. “If they find out their Protectors could be ruled by creatures like that—”

  “They won’t,” Neera hissed. “I’ll kill them all first.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Iliana said, grinding the fragments of the recorder with her boot. “It’s done.”

  Hilts looked at the remains. It was.

  It had gone predictably wrong. Twenty Sith couldn’t share a secret, not even for their own protection. Someone had told the tale. Perhaps one of the attendees, anguished and full of drink, had revealed all about the Lost Tribe’s origins. Certainly, many of the leaders’ comrades would have been anxious for news about what had transpired during the reading. And there, camped outside, were humans from all over Kesh, celebrating the Festival of Nida’s Rise. Humans with uvak, ready to fly and deliver the dire news.

  They weren’t special.

  The result was swiftly seen. The cities of Kesh had been crumbling. Now they burned. All of them, from what little word had come in from the rest of the continent. Today was the regularly scheduled Testament Day. It had only taken eight days for the cancerous truth to reach every place humans lived.

  They weren’t anything.

  Hilts peered out onto the nighttime streets from Jaye’s hejarbo-shoot hut. The dwelling had survived the first firestorm, but the arsonists were in motion again, and it likely wouldn’t be around for long. Everywhere, Keshiri watched from hiding, both fearing for their lives and fascinated by the convulsions their masters were putting themselves through. Anger flowed freely as an entire race tried to commit suicide.

  They didn’t deserve to be anything.

  “This is the end of times, Master Hilts,” Jaye said, huddling beside him in the doorway. The frightened Keshiri looked up at the cloud of crazed uvak, circling the flames.

  Hilts simply nodded. He’d told his aide about the contents of the recording. It didn’t really matter, now. The human population of Kesh was already down to a few thousand from all the infighting. How many could be left? He hadn’t seen any of the faction leaders since the riots broke out—not even Iliana, who’d seemed confident the danger was past. How wrong she was. It wouldn’t be long now.

  And yet …

  … Korsin had said something else. “The true power is behind the throne,” he had said. It was a strange statement. Hilts had heard of a Keshiri idiom where that referred to the contributions of a spouse. But the husband of Seelah couldn’t mean that. He’d met Iliana, her spiritual descendant. Hilts wouldn’t have trusted her not to rob his corpse. No Sith trusted a lover—least of all one like Seelah.

  Hilts stood in the doorway.

  “Caretaker, the rioters will see you!”

  The gray-haired human paid no mind, looking, instead, up toward the palace. They’d evacuated when the mob turned ugly. But it wasn’t what was there that was on his mind now. It was what had never been there.

  A throne.

  Cape billowing behind him, Hilts bolted into the street. Alarmed, Jaye followed, careful not to step on—or look at—any of his dead neighbors. “Caretaker, what is it?”

  “It’s the throne, Jaye. The throne!”

  The Keshiri knew the term. Elders in the Neshtovar used to fashion them for themselves. “But Korsin had no throne.”

  “Not in the palace, my boy. Look!” Grabbing his aide’s shoulders, he pointed the Keshiri to the west—and the cloud-enshrouded peaks of the Takara Mountains. Suddenly rejuvenated, Hilts recited the lines he’d memorized decades earlier. “There are secrets you must always keep. The true power is behind the throne. Should disaster befall—remember that!” Squinting through the smoke, he looked at the forbidden place. “Korsin’s throne was his seat from Omen—and that’s up there!”

  “I—I don’t understand,” Jaye stammered.

  “We weren’t meant to see the message from Sadow—but that’s not Yaru Korsin’s legacy. There’s something else—something he mentioned in the Testament. Something that might save the Tribe from itself!”

  Hilts breathed deeply, as excited as he had been in years. For his entire life, he thought he’d known all the history there was, all that Korsin had to say. Could he really have left … a postscript?

  “There’s only one thing to do,” Hilts said, cinching up his cape and walking confidently into the chaos. “We’re going to unseal the temple. We’re going aboard Omen!”

  Read on for an excerpt from

  Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Pantheon

  by Christie Golden

  Published by Del Rey Books

  Council Chambers of the Circle, Capital City of Tahv, Kesh

  The sun beating down upon the stained-glass dome of the Circle Chambers painted the forms of all those assembled in a riot of colors. Yet it was not hot in this large room; regulating the temperature was child’s play for such masterful users of the Force as the Sith assembled here.

  It was an emergency meeting. Even so, formalities were strictly observed; the Sith were nothing if not meticulous. Grand Lord Darish Vol, the leader of the Lost Tribe, had summoned the meeting less than a standard hour earlier. He now sat upon a dais in the very center of the room, elevated above all others, enthroned on his traditional metal-and-glass seat. While there had been sufficient time to don his colorful formal robes, he had not had time to sit and permit his attendants to paint his gaunt, aged face with the vor’shandi swirls and decorations appropriate to the meeting. Vol shifted slightly in his throne, displeased by that knowledge, displeased with the entire situation that had necessitated the meeting in the first place.

  His staff of office was stretched over his lap. His claw-like hands closed about it as his aged but still-sharp eyes flitted about the room, noting who was here and who was not, and observing and anticipating the responses of each.

  Seated on either side of the Grand Lord were the High Lords. Nin
e members of the traditional thirteen were here today, a mixture of male and female, Keshiri and human. One, High Lord Sarasu Taalon, would never again be among that number. Taalon was dead, and his death was one of the reasons Vol had called the assembly. Seated in a ring around the dais were the Lords, ranked below the High Lords, and standing behind them were the Sabers.

  Several of their number were missing, too. Many were dead. Some … well, their status remained to be seen.

  Vol could feel the tension in the room; even a non-Force-sensitive could have read the body language. Anger, worry, anticipation, and apprehension were galloping through the Chambers today, even though most present hid it well. Vol drew upon the Force as naturally as breathing in order to regulate his heart rate and the stress-created chemicals that coursed through his body. This was how the mind remained clear, even though the heart was, as ever, open to emotions and passion. If it were closed, or unmoved by such things, it would no longer be the heart of a true Sith.

  “I tell you, she is a savior!” Lady Sashal was saying. She was petite, her long white hair perfectly coiffed, and her purple skin the most pleasing tone of lavender; her mellifluous voice rang through the room. “Ship obeys her, and was not Ship the—” She stumbled on the choice of words for a moment, then recovered. “—The Sith-created construct who liberated us from the chains of our isolation and ignorance of the galaxy? Ship was the tool we used to further our destiny—to conquer the stars. We are well on our way to doing so!”

  “Yes, Lady Sashal, we are,” countered High Lord Ivaar Workan. “But it is we who shall rule this galaxy, not this stranger.”

  Although the attractive, graying human male had been a Lord for many years, he was new to his rank of High Lord. Taalon’s untimely demise had paved the way for Workan’s promotion. Vol had enjoyed watching Workan step into the role as if he had been born to it. While Sith truly trusted no one but themselves and the Force, Vol nonetheless regarded Workan among those who fell on the side of less likely to betray him.