Star Wars - Lost Tribe of the Sith 02 - Skyborn

voice had first reached her on the wind.
    “Helping us interact with the Keshiri is not just about helping
us
, Adari. You will learn things about your world that you never imagined.” He turned over the rock in her hand. “I don’t know how long we’re going to be here, but I promise you will learn more in the next few months than you have in your entire lifetime. Than
any
Keshiri has.”
    Adari shook. “What—what do you—”
    “A simple thing. Forget what you saw that day.”
    Korsin made good on his word. In her first months with the Skyborn, Adari had learned much about her home. But she had also learned some things about where
they
had come from, and who they were. She was a good listener.
By simple things, we know the world
.
    Korsin’s Sith were the beings from above that she denied—but they weren’t the gods of Keshiri legend. Not exactly. They had amazing powers, and perhaps they lived in the stars. But they didn’t bleed sand, and they weren’t perfect. They argued. They envied. They killed.
    The Sith did read minds, to a degree. Korsin had used that to call out to her for help after seeing her in the air. But they weren’t omniscient. She’d found that out with a simple, surreptitious experiment involving Ravilan. She’d suggested he visit a restaurant deep in Tahv’s busiest quarter. Off he went, getting lost in the same neighborhood she always got lost in. The Sith’s perceptive powers were amazing, but they still required accurate knowledge from others.
    She sought to provide that, accompanying Korsin to many work sites, mostly employing jovial Keshiri laborers. The Skyborn were perfect enough for the Keshiri—and perfect enough for her. Yaru Korsin was as far beyond Zhari Vaal in intellect as she was above the rocks, and as long as she learned to avoid the eye of Seelah, another widow of a fallen man, she could expect to learn a great deal more.
    At the same time her knowledge advanced, Izri’s faith was further glorified. She took little joy in that, apart from the occasional chuckle she got from having a more storied role in it than he had. She was theDiscoverer, always to be remembered by Keshiri society. No one would remember Izri.
    Watching another quarry being constructed, she wondered what that society would look like. She knew something the Sith didn’t: They’d be here for a long time. She’d mentioned it once to a miner, who promptly discounted it as advice from the local know-nothings.
    But she knew. The metals the Sith sought weren’t in the soil of Kesh. Scholars had scoured every part of the continent. They had recorded what they’d found. If the substances Korsin’s people required hid farther beneath the surface, it would take time to find them—a
lot
more time.
    Time, the Sith had.
    What, she wondered, would the Keshiri have?

Read on for an excerpt from

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Abyss
by Troy Denning
Published by Del Rey Books
    In the
Jade Shadow
’s forward canopy hung twin black holes, their perfect darkness surrounded by fiery whorls of accretion gas. Because the
Shadow
was approaching at an angle, the two holes had the oblong appearance of a pair of fire-rimmed eyes—and Ben Skywalker was half tempted to believe that’s what they were. He had begun to feel like he was being watched the instant he and his father had entered the Maw cluster, and the deeper they advanced, the stronger the sensation grew. Now, at the very heart of the concentration of black holes, the feeling was a constant chill at the base of his skull.
    “I sense it, too,” his father said. He was sitting behind Ben in the copilot’s seat, up on the primary flight deck. “We’re not alone in here.”
    No longer surprised that the Grand Master of the Jedi Order always seemed to know his thoughts, Ben glanced at an activation reticle in the front of the cockpit. A small section of canopy opaqued into a mirror, and he saw his father’s reflection staring out the side of the canopy. Luke Skywalker looked more alone and pensive than Ben ever remembered seeing him—thoughtful, but not sad or frightened, as though he were merely trying to understand what had broughthim to such a dark and isolated place, banished from an Order he had founded, and exiled from a society he had spent his life fighting to defend.
    Trying not to dwell on the injustice of the situation, Ben said, “So maybe we’re closing in. Not that I’m all that eager to meet a bunch of beings called the Mind