Kerebba was the biggest town he’d yet seen—drab and uninviting. Concrete wasn’t just for canals; the Alanciari lived in uninspired blocks of it. As the sun disappeared over a gray horizon, a depressing darkness flooded the streets. And, always, there was that blasted whistle sounding—here, louder than ever.
“I don’t want to overnight in a populated area,” he said, raising his voice as they approached the town square.
“We can’t go farther. The roads will be closed.”
“They weren’t closed last night! What are you talking about …”
Edell trailed off in astonishment. He looked to the pipes on a rooftop nearby. The whistles had stopped. Concerned, he tried to pull Quarra closer, only to be jostled by Keshiri, young and old, stepping out into the streets. Most were in uniform, like those he had met along the way, but not all. Some, he saw, were dressed relatively festively, in bright colors. More Keshiri entered the avenue, chattering and laughing. For a second, he thought he saw a human—
“Here’s one!” Quarra yelled, yanking back Edell’s hood. The High Lord stood, stunned, as Keshiri all around him gawked. His hand jabbed inside the slicker, where his lightsaber was clipped to his tunic. But just as he grabbed the weapon, the crowd laughed.
They laughed. Circling around, the locals hooted and whooped, pointing at the newcomer’s exposed face, paler and pinker than any Keshiri’s. Beneath the goggles, Quarra had applied a little makeshift face paint to Edell in angry black streaks, giving him a menacing appearance. Now she ripped at the back of the jacket, pulling it down and exposing his outfit—and the unlit weapon.
“He’s great!” called one bystander. “Look at his color!”
“He even has a lightsaber!”
Cheers of delight rose from the crowd—cheers that soon turned to jeers, at his expense. And not just him now. Befuddled, Edell looked to see other Keshiri dancing onto the streets, dressed in black with their faces painted in a variety of unpurple hues.
The crowd went wild. “The Sith! The Sith!”
The masqueraders fled toward the dusky plaza, where a great stage had been set up. Pushed along with the crowd, Edell had no choice but to follow—and was blinded when light blazed down from above. On mighty tripods, colossal globes burned brightly, some luminescent substance within mirrored and amplified a dozen times. At once, all of Kerebba could be seen. And all of it, it seemed, was heading here.
The lights, Edell thought, looking up. Korsin saw a continent in lights.
He looked to either side, suddenly realizing that he’d been separated from Quarra. No, there she was, working her way back to him—and smiling smugly. Ahead, revelers were climbing the dais, preparing some kind of production.
“So this is why they called me a performer.” He glared at her. “I’m not going up there.”
“You don’t have to,” she said, gesturing. There were “Sith” in the audience, too, snarling at revelers and receiving boos from excited uniformed children. “Just be your nasty self.”
Edell watched as Keshiri erected props on the stage. Rocks. Painted waves. A large sailing ship. Two Keshiri were joined in an uvak costume. “You thought you were under siege,” he said. “You’re stopping for a play?”
“Here, and in every city in Alanciar. It’s Observance Day. They weren’t going to cancel because of your invasion.” She seemed to swell with pride as she spoke. “Especially not because of that.”
“I don’t think much of it,” he said. The Keshiri back home put on lavish pantomimes, wearing rich regalia and performing in marbled halls. Patrons were rarely in short supply, as theater was always useful propaganda to some Sith or another. The troupes in the capital city had kept up their standards even as civilization around them had declined, breaking production only during the riots a quarter century earlier. They’d been an important part of restoring civil order, too, spreading the word of what Hilts had discovered at the mountain Temple. But this outdoor theater-in-the-round seemed amateurish, the costumes not at all “ready-for-Tahv.”
He was about to say as much when, on stage, the prop ship suddenly tossed in a pretend storm. The false rock rose to bar its path, and a Keshiri woman appeared from behind it. The audience applauded her arrival. Clad in leather armor, she held aloft a shining glass staff with a glowing globe on top—a miniature version of the lights illuminating the plaza. The rollicking ship stopped suddenly and dropped flat to the stage, revealing actors dressed like the sailors Edell had seen. Seeing her staff, they cowered. A hush fell over the crowd.
“I am Adari Vaal—and I am the Rock of Kesh!”
“Adari!” Edell couldn’t help but blurt the name, realizing as he did so that eyes were turning toward him. He froze. Quarra looked urgently toward him. Edell slunk, and attention turned back to the stage. He asked himself if he’d heard properly.
On stage, he got his answer. “I am Adari, the Rock and the Herald. Savior and Lost Daughter. Ally to the Bright Tuash, legendary winged bearer of mercy,” the Adari-actress said. “Cast off from far away, I rose from the ocean to bring you tidings of fear and wonder. I am the Rock that rose from the sea, and I will tell you of the flood to come!”
Edell gawked. Adari Vaal. Yaru Korsin’s confidante, or plaything, depending on which account you believed. The woman who had attempted a Keshiri insurrection—and fled to a watery death. He looked around. The Keshiri here seemed to have heard the speech before. Some were mouthing it as the actress spoke.
“There are enemies beyond your ken, people of Alanciar. You cannot see them, for they are beyond the sail of your farthest ship. You cannot hear them, though they may speak their evil in dangerous whispers to be heard on the air.”
Edell grumbled in Quarra’s ear. “This is formal talk. She should state her meaning plainly.”
“It’s a ceremony,” she whispered. “We do it every ten years.” Ten years was the length of Adari’s secret resistance against the Tribe, Quarra said—and on stage, the speaker was telling of that Tribe, and its evil. The Sith players emerged on stage, from behind the same rock. The audience hissed and moaned.
Adari raised her staff to the sky. “Yes, the Sith are the Destructors foretold—but fear not! For I have seen your Alanciar, and it is superior to Keshtah, in all of nature’s gifts.” She walked the perimeter of the stage, pointing outward. “Superior in the produce of your forests—fine, strong woods for sailing vessels. The jungles of Keshtah yield little that will bear weight. Superior in the creatures of the field—the mighty shumshur, the swift muntok. Beyond the uvak, Keshtah has no creatures that will bear the yoke.”
“We ate them all,” a Sith jester on stage interjected, earning peals of laughter. Throwing his arms before him to simulate a huge belly, he waddled around to derogatory hoots and calls.
“Fools, fools!”
Adari smiled. “Yes, that too—Alanciar is supreme in the intelligence of its people. With flamebroth and mirror you created the fireglobes, to keep your ways and homes lit. Your canals provide transport. Industry reaches all in Alanciar!”
Edell looked across the listeners as the recitation of successes continued. Until this moment, he’d steeled himself against the sights of Alanciar; it had long been suspected the place was more advanced. But now, surrounded by the enemy, he felt great unease. He’d grown up in a Tribe that had lost its way. Nothing had been certain. It was what had drawn him to architecture and engineering as a teenager: those had rules, unchanging and unquestioned.
Yes, the Restoration had repaired much of the damage, giving the Sith something to believe in again—but the Alanciar Keshiri had never stopped believing, since Adari Vaal visited them two thousand years before. Scanning the faces ahead of him, Edell saw certainty.
Why wasn’t I born here?
“I will teach you the language of the evil ones. You will speak it as your native tongue, so as to know them when they arrive. And I give you another gift,” the speaker said, lowering the glowing staff in the direction of the Keshiri sail
ors. “The Sith tap is a power known as the Force. It is a power some of you already have, within yourselves!” As the fireglobe touched the first sailor, he ripped off his outer costume to reveal a satiny white outfit, glistening with gold. “I do not have the power. But you may—and now, you know to look for it. You are the Protectors of Kesh!”
She smiled graciously and looked at the audience. “And you are, as well. You have fought the first battle,” she said, adding something new to the obvious delight of the listeners. “You won. And you will win again. I declare this day a Day of Observance. You will always be observant. And one day, you will triumph forever!”
The audience roared in self-congratulation. Edell watched in stunned silence as Quarra cheered loudly and clapped.
An elderly male stepped onto the stage. Identifying himself as the mayor of Kerebba, he seconded the call for vigilance. “We have all seen this drama before. But this is a special time, of all times—the enemy has come. Tonight our forces are scouring the peninsulas for any trace of the attackers. They will come again, to be certain. The War Cabinet has deployed anti-air forces to the west. Whether they come again in the same numbers or more, they will die. Die like Sith should!”
The crowd erupted in shouts, but more organized than before. Fists pumped into the air in unison.
Die like Sith! Die like Sith!
It was too much. Edell grabbed Quarra’s arm and pushed his way out of the crowd. Self-conscious, he put on the coat and hood again. He’d wanted to leap on stage and kill the preening yammerers.
He could have. Others would have. Why hadn’t he?
He struggled to control his anger. It wasn’t the time, and one little depot town wasn’t the place. If what he’d just seen was indeed happening everywhere, then Bentado’s invasion force was in peril.
And maybe, even, the Tribe itself?
“We go tomorrow as soon as the roads open,” Edell said to Quarra in the shadows. “I want to see this ‘War Cabinet’—and learn exactly what that Keshiri traitor told you about all of us!”
9
Quarra awoke to rain pelting her face. Her eyes opened to see Kesh’s sun peeking through a lush green canopy, high above. Warm raindrops struck her cheeks.
“Wet season in the jungle,” called a deep female voice from behind. “Even when it’s done raining, it stays in the trees. You shouldn’t lie around outside like that—not without a hat.”
Quarra dried her eyes and blinked. Alanciar hadn’t had jungles in centuries. Obviously, it wasn’t where she’d gone to sleep. But where was she?
She sat up in the mud. Behind her, a human woman in a straw hat worked the soil, transferring flowers from clay pots. She was tanner and younger than Edell, and wore short auburn hair. “Got to replant the dalsas while the soil’s still wet,” she said, not looking up from her work. “Quarra, right? You really ought to think about that hat. It pays to keep your hair short here, too. The arachnorids are hideous here.”
Quarra tensed on hearing her name. “The Sith … took me here. You’re one of them.”
The human chuckled. “I never used to take backtalk from Keshiri,” she said. “You’re lucky. I’ve mellowed since we moved here.”
Aside in a clearing in the trees, Quarra saw another human working a small plot with a hoe. In the dappled light she almost thought she was looking at Jogan: muscular, serene. But still alien. “You’re both Sith,” she said.
“We’re nothing,” the female replied, rising from the flower bed to face the Keshiri. “We’re nothing when we are—or when you are. I’m Orielle—call me Ori. And he’s Jelph.”
At the words, the sun’s rays mirrored through the mist. The world went wavy for a moment. “This isn’t real,” Quarra said. “I’m having a Force vision. Or a dream.”
“Never thought there was much difference,” Ori said.
“You live in the jungle?”
“I do. Or did. Time passes differently in jungles and dreams.”
Quarra looked down to see a human toddler tromping through puddles. Before he could reach her garden, Ori hoisted the child onto her hip. Quarra heard other young voices from behind a hut. “You have children.”
“Three. Like you.”
“Right.” It had to be a dream, Quarra knew; none of the Sith knew details of her family. She watched as Ori delivered the child to his older siblings: muddied themselves, but happy. An entire life lay here in the jungle clearing. Small—but seemingly full.
“I had responsibilities like you, once,” Ori said, unprompted. “I gave them up for love.”
“Love? A Sith?” Quarra caught herself. “Sorry, you said you weren’t—”
“I said I wasn’t Sith now. But I guess I wasn’t a very good Sith before, either.”
“Is there a good Sith?”
“Some are easier to live around than others—but if so, they’re probably not very good at being Sith, either.” Ori laughed. “And no, love isn’t the only reason I came here. I had responsibility, and a position—like you. I saw where it was leading. I didn’t like it.”
Quarra looked at the meager accommodations. “This is what you chose instead.”
“This is what hiding looks like,” Ori replied. She looked over at the children playing, and took a deep breath. “The problem is, the world was already running out of places to hide in my time. I don’t know that there’s much future in it.”
Quarra’s shoulders slumped as she listened. Between the children and the sounds of the jungle, it was a noisy place—but she sensed peacefulness here, something she’d longed for often in Uhrar.
“I wanted to live apart,” she said, almost to herself. “I’m so tired. I looked around and all I could see were things I’d already done. Even my children—I already knew what their lives were going to look like, before they’d lived them.” Quarra paused. “I guess that’s why I created something different for myself. To give me a dream to follow. I’m sure it sounds bad …”
“Oh, you can follow a dream,” Ori said, gazing back at her husband. The farmer looked up briefly and smiled back at the two of them before returning to his work. “You can follow a dream, and you can build your whole world around one.” She looked back at the Keshiri. “You can live in a dream for a long time. But eventually—”
“—eventually, the world will find you,” Quarra whispered. She opened her eyes.
They’d slept in a dry culvert, just off the side of the Kerebba canal station. There was no use convincing Edell to stay with her in one of the barracks her official status entitled her to. Since the Observance Day play, he’d been wound up like a hand-ballista ready to go off.
She couldn’t tell whether that was a good thing or not—she’d seen what he was capable of. But it meant something that he was so tense now. She had been right: Alanciar had been her greatest weapon against him. The farther north Quarra led the Sith, the more confident she grew. It was increasingly clear that his party was the only one that had landed—and as they passed through more industrial centers, she could see him imagining the weapons being constructed there.
That didn’t stop him from continuing to feign indifference, she saw. “Another ugly village,” he said as they left Minrath.
“You don’t fool me, Sith. I can sense it,” Quarra said. “You’re impressed.”
Edell looked directly at her. “I’ll admit your Keshiri here are better suited for crafting practical implements than ours are.”
“Your Keshiri?”
“Of course. Who else owns them?”
Quarra let out an exasperated sigh.
“Keshtah is a soft and beautiful continent,” he said. “Perhaps that’s what turned its natives to art. Yes, they made aqueducts, but they made them beautiful.” He gestured to a canal crossing up ahead. “If they thought about function as your people do, our aqueducts would have lasted longer.”
“They’re gone?”
“No, we repaired them. But if your people had designed them, we never would’ve had the probl
em.” He looked away, as if weighing his next words. “I think,” he said, finally, “that Omen landed in the wrong place.”
Quarra shook her head. “You didn’t listen to anything back in Kerebba, did you? You are the reason Alanciar looks the way it does. You Sith, and the threat of you. For two thousand years, we’ve been preparing for your coming.” She looked back onto the gray cityscape and lamented. “You don’t understand us at all. You made us like this.”
Edell smirked. “And if you think we would regret it, then you don’t understand us.”
By noon, they reached the prettier country of the Western Shield. Things were more spread out on this bulge of the Shank, with state farms straddling the waterways, and muntok-driven hay carts rumbling along the roads. Land that had once climbed gently eastward to the plateau that formed the bulk of the continent had long since been reshaped into orderly terraces. But the harvest was near, and the sight of so many greens and golds made even the towering fortresses amid the fields easy to overlook.
Quarra’s eyes traced a line of flashing signal stations delivering news from the coast to the military capital at Sus’mintri, perched at the plateau’s western edge. The rise was just visible in the clouds to the east: a lofty natural battlement, protecting the guts of Alanciar. She felt badly for the signalers and thoughtcriers here. Jogan’s life may not have been full of excitement, she thought, but at least he had more to look out upon than fields of grain.
Since her dream, thoughts of Jogan had troubled her. His tower was no jungle refuge, she knew—and she’d begun to question their entire relationship. He was the isolated one, with nothing to do most days, but she’d always been the one to write to him. She was no doubt the busier of the two, and yet every time their conversations ended owing to some assignment of hers, it had always been Quarra who struck up the next talk.
She had imagined that since she had so much to do, he was simply deferring to her schedule. But maybe he simply didn’t care as much.
What did he care about? And what good would a powerful woman be in the life of an inveterate bachelor watchtower guard, anyway? She’d begun to wonder.
Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories Page 28