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of the Force, and plunged the lightsaber straight downward, aiming for his back between his shoulder blades.

He dived forward, Force- pushing her off, but not before she had touched the tip of the glowing red blade to his robes. Ahri arched, his dive thrown off as his body twisted from the pain; even the training lightsabers in-flicted a powerful shock.

Vestara leapt as Ahri dived, using his Force push to her own advantage, turning twice in the air and landing surely, facing him. She smirked in satisfaction as she brushed her renegade locks out of the way. Ahri completed his dive and came to his feet, rolling in the sand.

Vestara extended her arm with the grace of a dancer.

Ahri’s lightsaber was snatched from his hand and flew into hers. She grasped it and dropped into the Jar’Kai stance, ready to come at him with both blades. Ahri looked up and sighed, dropping back into the sand.

“And you get distracted far too easily. Focus, Ahri, focus,” she chided. She gestured casually, just a slight jerk of her chin, and a handful of sand flew toward Ahri’s face. Muttering, he lifted his empty hand and used the Force to deflect the grains.

“It’s just training, Ves,” he muttered, getting to his feet and dusting himself off.

“It’s neverjust training,” she shot back. She deacti-vated her training lightsaber, hooked it back on her belt, and tossed Ahri’s to him. The Keshiri youth caught it easily, still looking disgruntled. Vestara undid her hair and fluffed it for a minute, letting the air penetrate to the roots to cool her scalp. Her long fingers busily re-braided it, properly this time, as she continued to speak, while Ahri shook grains of purple sand out of his own white, shoulder- length hair.

“How often have I told you that? Say that in the presence of one of the Masters and you’ll never make it be-yond a Tyro.”

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Ahri sighed and rose, nodding to acknowledge the truth of what she said. Neither of them had been formally chosen as an apprentice yet, although they had been training in classes under the tutelage of various Masters for years, their strengths and weaknesses in the Force noted and analyzed and pushed.

Vestara knew that, at fourteen, it was still possible, even likely, that she would be chosen by a Master as his or her formal apprentice. But she chafed horribly at the delay. Some Tyros were chosen at much younger ages, and Vestara knew that she was strong in the Force.

She reached out for a flask of now warm water and the canteen resting on the sand floated to her, the lid un-fastening as it moved. Vestara gulped down the liquid thirstily. Sparring at the height of the sun was exhausting, and Ahri always muttered about it, but she knew it toughened her. Vestara handed the canteen to Ahri, who also drank.

She regarded him for a moment. He was a nearly perfect physical specimen of a species whose physical strength, agility, and harmony of features and form had become an ideal for her own people. He could easily pass for a member of her own species— he would make a striking human, but a human nonetheless— were it not for the pale purple cast to his skin. His eyes, too, were slightly larger than a human’s; large and expressive. His shoulders were broad, his hips narrow, and there was not an ounce of superfluous fat on his frame. His face, though, was flushed a darker purple than usual because he was overheated, and his hair had far too much sand in it.

“That’s two for two,” she said. “You up for another round?” She gave him a wicked grin, which was exaggerated by the small scar at the corner of her mouth.

The scar that the Tribe saw as a flaw. It was plain on her face, right out in the open—there was very little she mill_9780345519382_3p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 4/28/09

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could do to disguise it. Attempts had been made to heal it and to correct it with cosmetic surgery. Those at-tempts had been mostly successful and now, to be sure, it was not all that noticeable. But this was a world where any flaw, any scar or deformity, was a strike against one’s potential for advancement.

The scar added insult to injury, as far as Vestara was concerned— because of its location, the thin line almost always made her look like she was smiling, even when she

wasn’t. She had hated that about it until Lady Rhea, one of the most respected of the Sith Lords, had told her that deception was actually a very useful thing indeed.

“It mars your beauty,” Lady Rhea had said bluntly, pausing as she strolled down the line of potential apprentices after a formal ceremony. “A pity.” She, whose beauty was only slightly diminished by the cruel rav-ages of time, reached out a long finger and touched the scar. “But this little scar— it can aid you. Make others think you are something you are not.” She tapped the scar lightly with each of the last four words, emphasizing her point.

That had made Vestara feel a bit better. All of a sudden, looking like she was smiling all the time, even when she wasn’t, seemed like a good thing to her.

“I think I’ve sweated off at least two liters already,”

Ahri replied. “Can’t we continue in the training courtyard at least? It’s cooler in the mountain shadows.”

At least he wasn’t refusing the offer of another round.

Vestara dragged a black- draped arm across her own forehead. She had to admit, fighting in the cool shadows of the proud columns, beautiful statuary, and sheer mountain stone in which the Temple courtyard was nestled had a definite appeal right at the moment.

While they were not yet formally apprenticed to any of the Sabers or the Masters, as Tyros they would be per-

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mitted to spar in the courtyard. That was as far as they were allowed to go, however. Neither of them had seen inside the Temple or, even more significant, inside the Ship of Destiny yet. The ship’s name was Omen,but the name “Ship of Destiny” had fallen into common usage.

For such it was. Such an ancient, precious part of the Tribe’s heritage, with all its secrets and mysteries, was not just for any eyes.

“Well,” Vestara said, “we can go back and finish there. But only because you’re too fragile to—”

Her teasing insult died in her throat as something passed over the sun.

It was not an uvak, one of the deceptively delicate winged reptiles that were used for aerial transportation.

Vestara’s dark brown eyes widened in shock.

“Ves,” Ahri said in a faint voice, “that’s . . . is that a ship?”

The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood on end despite the heat as she watched, lifting a hand to shade her eyes. She still couldn’t speak, but nodded. She was pretty sure that was exactly what the thing in the sky was.

Yet it looked nothing like the Ship of Destiny, or any other vessels she had seen depicted or heard described.

Rather than being long and rectangular, or V- shaped, it was a symmetrical sphere. With . . . with wings like an uvak. It moved swiftly and silently, and she now saw that its color was a dark orange- red. Closer and closer it came, until for a wild moment Vestara thought it was going to land right on the beach beside them.

It was coming in for a landing, certainly, but not quite so close as that. It was heading for the sharp, ridged mountains that seemed to spring up from the ocean itself. That was where the Ship of Destiny had crashed so long ago, and for a moment Vestara was alarmed that this vessel would suffer the same fate. Sudden worry mill_9780345519382_3p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 4/28/09