Star Wars - Lost Tribe of the Sith 02 - Skyborn

so she thought.
    * * *
    Shortly before the sun slipped behind the western ocean, she watched the last wisps of smoke disappear from the mountaintop. Adari didn’t think Nink could be coaxed up there again before her water-pouch ran out. The dried brekka beets were already gone. She’d left so quickly she hadn’t restocked her expedition pack.
    Now, sitting on a ledge and watching the sunset, she drew an invisible continent on her knee, wondering how far she would have to fly to reach any settlement that had not heard of her plight. There probably wasn’t such a place. The Neshtovar weren’t just the peacekeepers and lawgivers, they were the communications system that made far-flung Kesh one world. Circuit riders would have already spread the word from Tahv to the elder riders in each village. She had escaped, but freedom was no deliverance for her.
    Deliverance
.
    The word reached her on the wind. It wasn’t even a word, really—not one she had heard before. A strange, melodic combination of syllables that meant nothing to her ear. Yet her mind recognized it as a familiar concept:
deliverance
.
    Instinctively, she looked back toward the mysterious peak, drowning in shadow. Lights winked in the darkness near its massive base. Fires—but not the uncontrolled fires that must have been present at the mountaintop. These fires had been set.
    Adari sprang to her feet, losing her water-pouch over the edge. The Neshtovar! They’d hunted her here, and they’d camped, and in the morning, they’d find her! They wouldn’t wait to find out what she’d seen atop the mountain, not when she’d compounded her crime by daring to fly Nink.
    A breeze was blowing to the sea from the direction ofthe mountain. Cool, calming.
Deliverance
, came the word again. Another feeling followed, complex and emphatic:
We are yours—and you are ours
.
    Adari blinked back bewildered tears and stepped toward the sleeping uvak. The wind rose again.
    Come to us
.
    She’d been wrong to come here. The sky had told her to, but it didn’t seem like any kind of deliverance Adari knew.
    Her nose crinkled at the stench. The gully was dark, but it was clear something awful had been burned there. Even the sulfurous pits of the south weren’t this bad. She looked back at Nink, yawning in the woods and unwilling to follow her farther.
Wise animal
.
    The active fires were ahead, through trees over the hill. Air caressed her as she crept up. Whatever they were burning, it wasn’t what was in the gully.
    In the clearing below, Adari saw them: people. As many people as had been at her final hearing, only gathered around multiple campfires. She again thought of the Neshtovar lying in wait for her. If so, then her arriving on foot was probably for the best. She strained to make out their voices as she approached. She recognized one, but not his words. She crept closer—
    —and left her feet entirely, hurtling toward a tree. Flailing, Adari slammed hard against it, collapsing breathlessly at its base. Figures rushed at her from the shadows. Scrambling, she saw them—their bodies illuminated not by the fires, but from stalks of magenta energy emanating from their hands, just like she had seen before. She tripped over a root.
“No!”
    She never hit the ground. An unseen force yanked her through the maze of figures, depositing her abruptly before the largest bonfire. Rising, her back to the flames, she looked at the advancing wraiths. They werepeople, but not like her. Not purple, but beige, brown, red, and more—every color but what they were supposed to be. And some faces weren’t like hers at all. Tiny tentacles wiggled on red jowls. A fat, leprous figure, twice as bulky as the rest and with a hide like Nink’s, stood behind them all, grunting gutturally.
    Adari screamed—but they weren’t listening. They were all around her now, man, woman, and monster, shouting gibberish. She mashed her hands to her ears. It did no good. The words were digging past her ears. Digging at her mind.
    Mental pinpricks became knives. Adari reeled. The strangers surged forward physically and ethereally—pushing, scraping, searching. Waves of images flashed before her, of her sons, her house, her people—every-thing that was Adari, everything that was Kesh. She still saw mouths moving, but the cacophony now boomed inside her head. Words, meaningless words …
    … that somehow began connecting with familiar impressions. As with the breeze before, the voices were