Spoiler review:

Hilts returns, from Pantheon, along with his Keshiri assistant, scaling the mountain where the Omen, long dead, still sits. Once a mighty starship, then the center of a temple, it was abandoned as the Sith tried to spread out across the continent.

They are delighted to see that the sandpipes were indeed eight days off, according to the still-functioning chronometer aboard the Omen, something that was predicted in the previous book. They also come across Iliana, who either killed her uvak or rode the dying beast, sliced by lightsaber wounds, up to the mountain. This is the character who has changed the most since the last story. She is crying when they find her, holding the skull presumably belonging to Seelah, her idol, who was exiled to this place for the end of her life.

As they search the rooms where Korsin's seat of power resides or resided, they find some interesting things, but nothing like what Korsin referred to in his last message. The star map was apparently created using crystals that could make lightsabers function, and there is a message hidden inside the back of one of the seats of power. The message could be powerful in the right hands, but is hardly revolutionary.

Then they find the room where Korsin obviously spent most of his time thinking. I wonder if this room was hinted at in any of the previous stories. I'll have to re-read them as a group to find out.

The other Sith factions, meanwhile, either followed Iliana or banded together to do some more destruction. The ignorants who kept fighting each other, dwindling their already small numbers, decide that because of the revelation that they were not the dominant force in the galaxy, they must now erase all traces of the Sith on Kesh. The Keshiri, who are absent except for Hilts' assistant, would no doubt help them, except that I think the Sith are intent on killing all the Keshiri, as well.

They work outside the Omen to destroy a tower that would come crashing down on the ship, essentially destroying it, though I fail to see how that would totally erase it -surely some enterprising Keshiri or Sith (assuming any survived) could remove the tower and gain access to Omen again? But when the Keshiri assistant goes outside to find some glowsticks, he is discovered, and killed. The leaders of the remaining groups all gather in Korsin's thinking room, ready to kill Iliana and Hilts.

That is when Korsin's secret is revealed -he has had carved or painted maps of the entire world of Kesh, outlining every city or gathering of Keshiri, as recorded by Omen's sensors as it orbited the planet, about to crash. Nobody at that time, of course, was watching the world, all trying to avoid the crash. Was this hinted at, back in Precipice?

Without metal, they have not been inclined to make sailing ships that can cross Kesh's ocean, and the uvaks can't fly that far -but they know some might have, after the first rebellion against Korsin, back in Savior. I was wondering what the significance of Adari's flight there was, as we never see anything about her pack of survivors. Here, Hilts wonders if she survived, and if she spread word about the Sith among the other tribes, so that the Keshiri might be ready to oppose them.

That is irrelevant, however, as the idea that there is a whole planet out there to conquer unites the Sith into a larger cause, willing them to live and see their empire spread. They no longer want destruction of all that was Sith. They've already forgotten their reduced status in the galaxy, united in a cause!

And at the end of Pantheon, I wondered if Hilts would become the next High Lord... he is promoted immediately on seeing Korsin's secret, as the most wise and knowledgeable Sith. Then and there, he takes Iliana as his wife, thus offering him the best protection on the planet -by the law of the Sith, if Hilts dies, Iliana must also be put to death. On the other hand, I wonder why she's worried. She managed to elude death since Pantheon, even killing or maiming leaders of the other factions.

Although all of the Lost Tribe of the Sith books are very short, this one seemed the shortest, though I think it was about the same as the previous installment. It managed to do what it intended; I only wish it intended to do more.