She’d barely even thought about them since she arrived among the newcomers, she realized. Shaking her head in guilt, she revealed something else: that the Keshiri might not listen to her.
Korsin seemed unsurprised—and unruffled. “You’re smart, Adari. You’ll make them listen.” He gently wrapped her shoulders with the azure blanket she’d slept beneath. “Keep this,” he said. “The sun’s setting soon. It could be a cold ride.”
mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1
22
John Jackson Miller
Adari looked around. Seelah stood in silent fury, unmoved from before. The others Korsin had intro-duced eyed their leader nervously; red tentacle-jowled Ravilan exchanged a worried look with Hestus. Even the hulking Gloyd, who, despite his brutish appearance, was clearly Korsin’s greatest ally here, shifted uncomfortably. But no one barred her from leaving their campsite.
When a strong hand did stop her at the edge of the clearing, she was surprised to see whose it was: Korsin’s. “About the Keshiri,” Korsin said. “You told us about Tahv, your town—it sounds a good size. But how many are the Keshiri? How many Keshiri are there in all, I mean?”
Adari answered immediately. “We’re numberless.”
“Ah,” Korsin said, his posture softening. “You mean they have never been counted.”
“No,” Adari said. “I mean, we don’t have a number that large.”
Korsin froze, his grip on her arm tightening. His dark eyes, slightly smaller than a Keshiri’s, focused on the wilderness beyond. She’d never seen him unnerved. If this was it, it lasted less than a second before he stepped back.
“Before you leave,” he said, finding a tree to lean against, “tell me what you know about the Skyborn.”
Korsin had called the vessel he arrived in Omen.The word not only existed in the Keshiri tongue, but was a long-held favorite of the Neshtovar. Watching what was happening now on the plaza known as the Circle Eternal, Adari guessed even the uvak-riding chiefs were realizing the irony.
She had returned to Korsin after a single day, one full week after Omenhad collided with the mountain—and with her life. It had been a simple matter for her to mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1
Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith:Skyborn 23
attract the uvak-riders there; as soon as the patrols spotted her and Nink, they followed the whole way to the Cetajan Range. The place had been the scene for several surprises in recent times, but none trumped the moment when the Neshtovar came upon Adari standing defiantly amid 240 supportive visitors from above, almost every one signaling his or her presence with a glowing ruby lightsaber. She didn’t have one of the strange devices, but she glowed just the same from within. Adari Vaal, collector of rocks and enemy of order was now Adari Vaal, discoverer and rescuer; answerer of the mountain’s call.
Add “prophet” to that, she thought as she watched the dozen score visitors—some hobbling from their ordeal—enter the Circle Eternal. They passed between gawking, silent crowds of Keshiri, many of the same people from her door the week before. Ahead in the Circle, all the Neshtovar in the region were present, more than she’d ever seen. Three days of aerial rescue operations had brought the newcomers off the mountain, days in which the word had gone out far into the hinterlands.
The Skyborn had arrived on Kesh.
No lesser reason could explain why the riders com-pliantly took their positions not in the Circle Eternal itself, but along the raised perimeter. The villagers had watched Adari’s hearing from here; now the Neshtovar were watching her in the Circle, marching along behind Korsin. Behind them, the visitors filed in, forming their own inner perimeter over which the Neshtovar strained to see.
Izri Dazh looked small, standing beneath the column three times his height that served as the sundial’s gnomon. Normally, it made him seem larger. Not today. He limped forward and greeted Korsin and company with mawkish words of praise before turn-
mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1
24
John Jackson Miller
ing to the audience. Straining to see over the line of visitors, Izri made the declaration official. These werethe Skyborn, he said, come down from the very mountain from which their servants had brought back the law centuries earlier. It wasn’t the same mountain, Adari knew; perhaps the texts would be changed later. But Izri ignored that detail for now.
The visitors had established their identities to the satisfaction of all of the Neshtovar, he said.
“You didn’t believe them when they levitated your cane,” Adari whispered, unable to resist.
“That ended when they levitated me,” Izri rasped, under his breath. He turned back to see the villagers cheering—not for his proclamation, but for Yaru Korsin, Grand Lord of the Skyborn, who had just physically leapt the distance to the top of the column.
When the cheering finally died down, Korsin spoke in the Keshiri words that his interlocutor, the honored Adari Vaal, Daughter of the Skyborn, had taught him that morning. “We havecome from above, as you say,”
he said, deep voice carrying to all. “We have come to visit the land that was a piece of us, and the people of that land. And Kesh has welcomed us.”
More cheering. “We will found . . . a templeatop the mountain of discovery,” he continued. “We will be many months in labors there, tending to the vessel that brought us and communing with the heavens. And in that time, we will make our home here in Tahv, with our children—aided by the Neshtovar, who were such good stewards here in our absence. They will leave here today, taking wing to all corners of Kesh, to spread the word of our arrival, and find the artisans we require.”
He spoke over the applause. “We are the Skyborn—and we willreturn to the stars!”
Happy chaos. Adari’s younger son, Tona, squirmed mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1
Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith:Skyborn 25
against her. She spied her mother and Finn at an honored place just outside the Circle, beaming happily.
Adari looked up at Korsin—and swallowed hard.
It was all so perfect.
And all so wrong.
mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1
Chapter F our
The rapturous mood of the Kesh lasted straight through Moving Day. The Skyborn had been quartered in the fine homes of the Neshtovar while the riders spread the word. As the Neshtovar returned one by one, their guests uniformly declared their preference to remain in the relatively sumptuous accommodations.
After the sixth rider appealed to Izri, the elder declared that allriders should move their families to humbler homes, that the Skyborn might know their devotion.
Korsin and Seelah had been living in Izri’s own house since the first day.
Everyone moved but Adari. For her service to the Skyborn, she’d been allowed to remain in Zhari’s house. It also kept her near Korsin, whom she saw daily in her informal role as ambassador and aide. She saw all the prominent Skyborn daily: gruff but amiable Gloyd, who was something called a Houk; Hestus, busily indexing the Keshiri vocabulary; and rust-colored Ravilan, who often seemed lost, a minority within a minority. She also saw Seelah, who had installed herself in Korsin’s lavish lodgings. Seelah’s child was Korsin’s nephew, Adari learned.