“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. The 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!”
Chapter Four
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—
&n
bsp; —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 alien 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!”
“They only knew what they could see, on uvak-back—and in places where uvak could reach,” Hilts said, excitedly running his fingertips across the map. There were crystals denoting cities here, too—far more than on the familiar map across the room—and Tapani characters etched nearby. “This was what was behind the throne,” he said, turning to face the others. “This is what Korsin meant!”
As the Caretaker turned back, the warriors spread across the room, using their lightsabers now for illumination rather than defense. “What’s this writing here?” Edell asked, frustrated. “There’s a lot of it in this spot.”
“Just a moment,” Hilts said, stepping over to the section. It had been etched with a diamond stylus—an artifact he’d remembered puzzling over as curator in the Tahv palace, years earlier. “This is Korsin’s own handwriting!”
The room fell silent as he studied. There were some new words here, which he made out to refer to the Kesh and Keshiri, terms that wouldn’t have been known in the Tapani dialect. Korsin was evidently a wordsmith, along with everything else. Haltingly, he recited, as best he could …
“Nida, you will know this language from the studies I’ve assigned you—but you won’t know this map. No one does. It’s based on the last data recorded by the cams of Omen during our descent across the dark side of Kesh. When I discovered a cam with a working display, I hid the device, transferring over the years what it saw to the map panels here until its power finally gave out.
“Our people and the Keshiri have thought this continent was all there was, alone in a gigantic sea. Taking control of the continent of Keshtah gave our people a purpose. But we’ve just been on Keshtah Minor. This map displays Keshtah Major—a landmass dwarfing ours, far beyond the range of any uvak to fly! And with far more people!
“And yes, there are people. There must be. The crystals represent lights—lights!—seen on the dark side of the planet. There are cities there, another whole civilization. Keshiri, likely, but perhaps more advanced—and possibly not in fear of the Skyborn. They could add to our power—or could be our enemies.
“For years, I’ve secretly annotated the map based on what I could make out before the images died. It’s truly another world. I’ve done all I can now, and my trusted Keshiri are sealing the map panels in advance of our move to Tahv.
“But you—or your descendants—may one day need a cause that will unite our people. The knowledge I leave here is true power. Envy has driven the Sith to great accomplishments. Now there is again something to covet—something that may be within reach of the properly led …”
The room remained silent after he stopped reading. Hilts looked at the words again—and the great new map, surrounding the text—and exhaled. Awkwardly, he felt a bulge in his vest pocket and produced the glass tube. “Umm—I have a letter from his mother, too.”
Standing peaceably alongside Iliana before the new maps, Bentado looked back at Hilts. “He’s got more of the same writing everywhere. Are there guides to this language?”
“There were,” Hilts said, “until you people destroyed my archives.” He shuffled his feet. “I’m the only one who knows it now.” Hearing his own words, he straightened. I’m the only one who knows it now!
“This is … unimaginable,” Iliana said. “Why didn’t Korsin tell anyone?”
“He already had a continent to conquer,” Hilts said. “And his feud with Seelah and Jariad was too personal—they wouldn’t have been moved by this.” He looked at the gathered rivals. “But it’ll move our people now. If you need Sith to act in unison—give them an enemy.”
Taking advantage of the peace, Hilts unrolled the missive from Takara Korsin. He read of the destiny of the Tapani humans, who had wandered into Sith territory and had been enslaved—and he read of their future, ruling som
eplace on their own. And then another place. And another. “If you guide our people well, they will always have a mission.”
Edell looked dazzled. “How will we get there?” Everyone in the room knew the problem. The Keshiri weren’t a naval culture. The local woods were either too dense to float or too flimsy to bear any weight.
“It’ll be the biggest thing our society’s ever undertaken,” Hilts said. “We’ll never be able to do it if we act like we have been. We’ll need everybody.” He nodded to the deformed Neera. “Everybody. It will require order, and discipline.” He paused. “As in the days of old.”
Abruptly Edell snapped off his lightsaber. “We will craft the society again as in the old ways.” He stepped toward Hilts and knelt. “You are the Caretaker. You alone know the old tongue—and you know the old ways better than anyone. You will guide our people well.”
Hilts looked in astonishment at the young man kneeling before him. Edell’s fellow Golden Destiny members bowed, as well. To the side, Korsin Bentado paused—and finally nodded, dipping his bald head as he fell to his knees. “You have redeemed our faith in Korsin.”
Even Neera knelt. “Where no path existed, you found one wide enough for all. Alone, you have my trust.”
Soon only Iliana remained standing, gawking in shock at the sight of her collected assailants, all genuflecting before the dumbfounded museum curator.
“All hail Varner Hilts—the new Grand Lord!”
Epilogue
Hilts had given the previous age its name. Now, with the Time of the Rot ending, he had also named the era to come.
The Hilts Restoration. He liked the sound of it.
The largest surviving faction after the two-week chaos had been the Golden Destiny, and it turned out to be fortuitous. Like their rivals, they wanted to seize power on Kesh, but they’d always had their eyes set in the right direction: outward. Hilts couldn’t offer them the return to the stars they wanted, but he’d found a new world for them to conquer. Accompanied by Bentado, Neera, and the others, they’d fanned out quickly onto the mainland, announcing the great tidings. The Tribe’s governing system would be restored and set toward a goal.
Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #8: Secrets Page 3