“But he was your brother.”

Korsin’s grip tightened for a moment before he let go altogether. “You area good listener,” he said, straight-ening. The fact wouldn’t have been hard to learn. “Yes, he was my brother. But he was a danger—and we had dangers enough when you found us,” he said. He looked deeply into her eyes. “And I think this is something you know something about, Adari. That same sea took someone from you, too. Didn’t it?”

Adari’s mouth opened. How?Zhari had died there, but the Neshtovar would never have told Korsin.

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Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith:Skyborn 29

Speaking of a rider’s fall broke their greatest taboo: falling was being claimed by the Otherside. No one had seen it happen, save for Nink— and the all-seeing Skyborn.

Korsin was either a mind reader, or he was who he said he was. Her words barely came out. “It—it’s not the same. Youpushed that man. I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to my—”

“Of course you didn’t. Accidents happen. But you didn’t mind that he died,” he said. “I can see it in you, Adari. He was a danger to you—to the person you’re becoming.” Korsin’s bushy eyebrows turned up.

“You’re glad he’s gone.”

Adari closed her eyes. Putting his arm around her shoulder, Korsin turned her toward the sun. “It’s all right, Adari. Among the Sith, there is no shame in it.

You would never be what you are today with him keeping you down. Just as you’d never be what you’re going to become with Izri Dazhkeeping you down.”

At the name, Adari’s eyes opened. The sunlight dazzled her, but Korsin wouldn’t let her turn away. “You were afraid of us,” he said, “and afraid when you saw the body. You knew we’d die on the mountain if you didn’t bring help. Yet you brought the Neshtovar anyway—because you thought we could help you against them.”

He released her. Adari looked blankly at the sun for another moment before looking away. Behind her, Korsin spoke in the soothing tones he’d used when his 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 anyKeshiri has.”

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30

John Jackson Miller

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 theyhad 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 percep-tive powers were amazing, but they still required accu-rate 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 the mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1

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Discoverer, 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 lotmore time.

Time, the Sith had.

What, she wondered, would the Keshiri have?

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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 Shadowwas 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 brought mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi:Abyss 33

him 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 Drinkers.”

His father thought for a moment, then said, “Well, I am.”

He didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t need to. Ben and his father were on a mission to retrace Jacen Solo’s five-year odyssey of Force exploration. At their last stop, they had learned from an Aing- Tii monk that Jacen had been bound for the Maw when he departed the Kathol Rift. Since one purpose of their journey was to determine whether Jacen had been nudged toward the dark side by something on his voyage, it only made sense that Luke would want to investigate a mysterious Maw- dwelling group known as the Mind Drinkers.

What impressed Ben, however, was how calm his father seemed about it all. Ben was privately terrified of falling victim to the same darkness that had claimed his cousin. Yet his father seemed eager to step into its depth and strike a flame. And why shouldn’t he be? After everything that Luke Skywalker had suffered and achieved in his lifetime, there was no power in the galaxy that could draw him into darkness. It was a strength that both awed Ben and inspired him, one that he wondered if he would ever find himself.