Star Wars - Lost Tribe of the Sith 04 - Savior Read Online Free PDF

about the same thing, she thought. Perhaps the tales were true. Perhaps the real Skyborn, the
true
Protectors of legend, were out there somewhere, hunting for the Sith.
    She didn’t believe it.
    But then, she never had.
    Seelah awoke on a slab in her old sick ward. There wasn’t any difference between the patient accommodationsand the biers in the morgue; it was all cold marble, just as everything in the accursed temple was.
    She was moving now—only her legs weren’t. She remembered it all. Seconds after she saw Nida arrive, Gloyd brought the fight into her chamber. Gloyd had always bragged that whoever took him out wouldn’t live to celebrate. Indeed, cornered by Seelah and her confederates, Gloyd had activated something he must have had literally up his sleeve since the crash: a proton detonator. The Houk’s insurance policy had brought the room down on the entire party.
    The Force had helped free Seelah from the rubble that pinned her from the knees down, but nothing could make her walk again. She didn’t need her medical training to recognize that. She’d worked tirelessly to become a perfect specimen of humanity, something for the Tribe to aspire to. Now, sitting up and surveying her cuts and bruises, she knew she would never live up to her old example again.
    “You’re awake.” came a soft female voice. “Good.”
    Seelah craned her neck to see her daughter in the doorway, wearing her outfit from Dedication Day. When Nida didn’t move to enter, Seelah used her aching arms to turn herself.
    “You’re going to be doing a lot of that,” Nida said, stepping inside and dipping a cup into a basin. She drank deeply and exhaled. “Oh, when you need it, the water’s over here.” She looked away.
    Nida explained how she had learned from Tona Vaal of the plan to steal the Sith’s uvak, timed just when as many important Sith as possible would be on the mountain. It had taken her more time than she expected, but she had foiled the plot in Tahv and hurried to her father’s side. “I guess you can feel it—Father’s gone.”
    Seelah licked her lips, tasting her own dried blood. “Yes. And Jariad?”
    “Father tried to throw him over the side with the Force,” Nida said. “He tried … and when he failed,
I
did it.”
    Seelah looked blankly at her daughter.
    “I hated to use poor Tona like that,” Nida said, “but he thought he had something I wanted.” She took another sip and dropped the cup. “We had something in common, you know. Our mothers had no use for our fathers.”
    Tona had revealed that the conspirators were taking the uvak to the Sessal Spire, but he knew nothing beyond that. “There’s no sign of them there,” Nida said. “Our guess is they plunged themselves into the lava pit. In spite—or fear. It doesn’t matter.” Sith or Keshiri, dissent was finished on Kesh. It had been a productive day.
    “I came here because we just had the reading of Father’s final testament,” she said. It existed—in her care. “He commends his legacy to me—and the three surviving High Lords have ratified it. So you see? You
are
the mother of the new Grand Lord. Congratulations.” Nida beamed. At her age, she could expect to rule Kesh for decades to come. “Or until the Sith come to rescue us.”
    Seelah sneered. “You
are
a child.” She slid from the slab, only to brace herself against it with her hands when her feet failed to respond. “No one’s coming for us. Your father knew that.”
    “He told me. It doesn’t really matter to me, one way or the other.”
    “It should,” Seelah said, struggling to straighten. “If I tell those people out there …”
    Nida casually replaced the cup and stepped back toward the doorway. “There’s no one out there,” she said. “Perhaps you should hear the rest of Father’s final wishes.” Henceforth, she explained, on the death of the Grand Lord, that person’s spouse and household laborers, too, would be sacrificed. “Technically, to honor