Add “prophet” to that, she thought as she watched the dozen score visitors—some hobbling from their ordeal—enter the Circle Eternal. They passed between gawking, silent crowds of Keshiri, many of the same people from her door the week before. Ahead in the Circle, all the Neshtovar in the region were present, more than she’d ever seen. Three days of aerial rescue operations had brought the newcomers off the mountain, days in which the word had gone out far into the hinterlands.
The Skyborn had arrived on Kesh.
No lesser reason could explain why the riders com-pliantly took their positions not in the Circle Eternal itself, but along the raised perimeter. The villagers had watched Adari’s hearing from here; now the Neshtovar were watching her in the Circle, marching along behind Korsin. Behind them, the visitors filed in, forming their own inner perimeter over which the Neshtovar strained to see.
Izri Dazh looked small, standing beneath the column three times his height that served as the sundial’s gnomon. Normally, it made him seem larger. Not today. He limped forward and greeted Korsin and company with mawkish words of praise before turn-
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ing to the audience. Straining to see over the line of visitors, Izri made the declaration official. These werethe Skyborn, he said, come down from the very mountain from which their servants had brought back the law centuries earlier. It wasn’t the same mountain, Adari knew; perhaps the texts would be changed later. But Izri ignored that detail for now.
The visitors had established their identities to the satisfaction of all of the Neshtovar, he said.
“You didn’t believe them when they levitated your cane,” Adari whispered, unable to resist.
“That ended when they levitated me,” Izri rasped, under his breath. He turned back to see the villagers cheering—not for his proclamation, but for Yaru Korsin, Grand Lord of the Skyborn, who had just physically leapt the distance to the top of the column.
When the cheering finally died down, Korsin spoke in the Keshiri words that his interlocutor, the honored Adari Vaal, Daughter of the Skyborn, had taught him that morning. “We havecome from above, as you say,”
he said, deep voice carrying to all. “We have come to visit the land that was a piece of us, and the people of that land. And Kesh has welcomed us.”
More cheering. “We will found . . . a templeatop the mountain of discovery,” he continued. “We will be many months in labors there, tending to the vessel that brought us and communing with the heavens. And in that time, we will make our home here in Tahv, with our children—aided by the Neshtovar, who were such good stewards here in our absence. They will leave here today, taking wing to all corners of Kesh, to spread the word of our arrival, and find the artisans we require.”
He spoke over the applause. “We are the Skyborn—and we willreturn to the stars!”
Happy chaos. Adari’s younger son, Tona, squirmed mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1
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against her. She spied her mother and Finn at an honored place just outside the Circle, beaming happily.
Adari looked up at Korsin—and swallowed hard.
It was all so perfect.
And all so wrong.
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The rapturous mood of the Kesh lasted straight through Moving Day. The Skyborn had been quartered in the fine homes of the Neshtovar while the riders spread the word. As the Neshtovar returned one by one, their guests uniformly declared their preference to remain in the relatively sumptuous accommodations.
After the sixth rider appealed to Izri, the elder declared that allriders should move their families to humbler homes, that the Skyborn might know their devotion.
Korsin and Seelah had been living in Izri’s own house since the first day.
Everyone moved but Adari. For her service to the Skyborn, she’d been allowed to remain in Zhari’s house. It also kept her near Korsin, whom she saw daily in her informal role as ambassador and aide. She saw all the prominent Skyborn daily: gruff but amiable Gloyd, who was something called a Houk; Hestus, busily indexing the Keshiri vocabulary; and rust-colored Ravilan, who often seemed lost, a minority within a minority. She also saw Seelah, who had installed herself in Korsin’s lavish lodgings. Seelah’s child was Korsin’s nephew, Adari learned.
Seelah always glowered at Adari when she was around Korsin. Including today, as Adari stood with mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1
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him at a dig on the edge of the Cetajan Range, in sight of the ocean she fled to a month before. The Skyborn needed structures to stabilize and protect Omen,but first they needed a clear land passage onto the peninsula.
A route was taking shape with the Skyborn, whose number included many miners, hewing huge chunks of strata with their lightsabers.
“Sabers’ll do better when we recover some of the Lignan crystals to power them,” Gloyd said. Korsin presented a rock sample to Adari. Granite. The efforts were not for her, of course, but she’d always wondered what was below. Now she knew.
“You were right after all,” Korsin said, watching her study the stone. She hadn’t mentioned her conflict with the Neshtovar, but she’d been anxious to confirm her theories with someone who knew. Volcanos didform new land. And the mountains of the Cetajan Range weren’t volcanoes—while granite did come from magma, they told her, it was formed far underground over the course of eons. That was why its rocks looked different from the flamestones. “I don’t understand half what my miners tell me,” Korsin said, “but they say you could easily help them—if you weren’t helping me.”
Korsin began speaking with Gloyd about their next project, a dig to find metals necessary to repair Omen.
Adari started to interject when she saw Seelah orbiting.
Adari shuddered as the woman passed from sight.
What had Adari done to earn such hatred?
She’s not staring at me,Adari realized. She’s staring at Korsin.
“I saw you,” Adari blurted to Korsin.
“What?”
“I saw you a second time on the mountain, that day.
You threw something over the side.”
Korsin turned from his work. He gestured—and Gloyd stepped away.
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“I saw you throw something,” Adari said, swallowing. She looked down at the ocean, crashing against the cliffs. “I didn’t know what—until you sent me to return to the village.” Korsin stepped warily toward her. Adari couldn’t stop talking. “I flew down there, Korsin. I saw him below, on the rocks. He was a man,” she said, “like you.”
“Like me?” Korsin snorted. “Is . . . he still there?”
She shook her head. “I turned him over to look at him,” she said. “The tide swept him away.”
Korsin was her height, but as she shrank, he loomed.
“You saw this—and yet you still brought the Neshtovar to find us.”
Adari froze, unable to answer. She looked at the rocks, far below, so like the ones farther up the range.
Korsin reached for her as he had before . . .
. . . and drew back. His voice softened. “Your people turned on you to protect their society. You were a danger?”
How did he know?Adari looked up at Korsin. He looked less like Zhari all the time. “I believed something they didn’t.”
Korsin smiled and took her hand gently. “That’s a fight my people are familiar with. That man you saw—he was a danger to oursociety.”