Asha pressed her lips together in a hard line.
She looked back to the pit.
The combatants knew one another. It was why this fight had gone on so long. If they were strangers, it would have already been done.
But the young slave knew Greta, which made it hard to kill her.
Greta tossed her knife away as she knelt. Its shining edge lay in the red sand, far out of reach, and the boy sank to his knees before her. His free hand cupped the back of Greta’s head and Asha saw his lips move, asking a question.
Greta nodded.
The boy slashed his blade across her throat.
Crimson blood spilled over his hands. He pulled Greta tight against him until the life in her winked out.
Cries of victory or defeat, depending on how the bets were placed, went up all around the pit. Draksors hopped down from benches. Those who bet correctly moved to collect their winnings. Others lingered behind, staring somberly down at the bloodstained sand.
Asha stood frozen, her throat burning, watching the slave press his face into Greta’s neck as her blood soaked his shirt. He kissed the top of her head and murmured some kind of prayer, until the soldats pried her body out of his arms and took it away.
Which was when he turned the knife on himself.
Eleven
One thing Asha was sure of: she would not be marrying Jarek. If she died hunting Kozu, so be it. She would rather be dead than married to a monster.
Asha slipped through the horde of draksors and fled through the streets, needing to sink her axe into a dragon’s heart. The walls crowded in too close. She wanted the Rift beneath her feet and the desert wind on her skin. Most of all, she wanted to hold the First Dragon’s head up before the entire city and see the look on Jarek’s face when her father declared their wedding canceled.
So while everyone was at the pit, Asha raided the palace kitchens for food. She had five days left before her binding. She needed to pack enough to last.
A lidded silver box waited in her room. When she opened it, a gold necklace studded with rubies winked out at her. Another gift from Jarek.
Asha slammed the lid closed.
She changed into hunting clothes, grabbed her armor and pack, and set out for the temple. Inside, she slipped through the shadows, passing guardians murmuring prayers in candlelit rooms. She moved silently down the corridors. As she did, she heard the faint sound of a lute being played somewhere in the distance.
As she walked, the gray-haired slave lingered behind her eyes. Her blood spilling over her combatant’s hands. Her body slumping forward. Greta had protected a fellow skral, and it had gotten her killed.
Soon, Asha found herself at the bottom of the narrow stairway she sought. The song was louder here. She climbed the steps, stopping before the carved door at the top, about to knock, when the sound within the room made her fist pause in midair.
This was where the song was coming from.
On the other side of the door, someone was plucking the strings of a lute. A voice wove through the notes. A voice like rain falling softly on sand.
A story swelled within her, pushing at her seams. She thought of Rayan watching Lillian dance in the orange grove. . . .
The sight of her was like a still pool. Like a calm and soothing place.
No. Asha forced the story down into her darkest depths and banged her fist on the door. The song abruptly stopped.
When the door opened, Asha looked up into a face flecked with freckles. The skral’s eyes were shadowed by dark half-moons.
“Do you have a death wish? I could hear you playing halfway through the temple.” She motioned to where his hand gripped the neck of his pale, worn-looking lute. “Where did you get that?”
The moment she stepped past him, she stopped. Dressed in gold, her brother, Dax, rose from a crouched position near the shelves full of scrolls.
The slave shut the door. “Your brother brought it.”
Asha looked to her brother, expecting some kind of explanation.
Dax simply studied her, then went back to reading his scroll.
What is going on? she wondered.
But asking questions would only delay her. So, deciding it was better not to, Asha eyed them both warily as she moved for her slayers beneath the cot.
Dax watched Asha put her armor on over her hunting clothes. “Where are you going?”
She ignored him.
The fireproof leather hide curled like parchment around her legs and arms, overlapping in places. She buckled each piece into place before sliding the breastplate over her head.
“Looks like she’s going hunting,” said the slave, sitting down on the cot. He began to play his lute again, and this time Asha noticed the name Greta elegantly engraved near the bottom. The slave winced every once in a while until whatever pain it caused him was forgotten in the joy of playing. In between plucking, he tapped out a rhythm on the belly of the instrument. He let the song build and build until Dax started tapping his foot to the beat, a small smile tugging at his mouth.
Asha stared at them, speechless.
She didn’t know what angered her more: her brother’s disregard for his own rank or his lack of concern at the noise—noise that would put this slave back into the danger Asha had just delivered him from.
She wanted to shake her brother. This was not the behavior of a king to be. It was the behavior of a fool.
She couldn’t abide it.
“Is this the plan, then?” Asha towered over the skral. “To lead Jarek right to you?”
His fingers silenced the strings. He looked up at her.
“Someone’s prickly today.”
Her temper flared. Before she could respond, he went on.
“Are you going hunting?” He looked her up and down. “Because the law says your hunting slaves have three days of rest before you can take them out again.”
Asha frowned. Why would a house slave know dragon-hunting laws? And anyway, Asha always gave her hunting slaves five days of rest. Well-rested slaves made better hunters.
“I’m not taking them.”
The slave set aside his instrument and rose, stepping toward Asha, his eyebrows drawn together in that curious look of his.
“You’re going alone?” His gaze flickered over her face. He stood so close, she could have counted all of his freckles if she wanted to. “Tell me again, which one of us has the death wish?”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
Dax put the scroll back on the shelf before stepping up beside the slave.
“Asha.” Her brother’s smile was long gone. “It isn’t safe to hunt alone.”
“Because stealing Jarek’s slave was safe?”
She thought of the shaxa. Of the jealous rage in Jarek’s eyes. Of being trapped beneath him, unable to breathe.
The room went quiet.
Once the memory started, Asha couldn’t stop it from unraveling completely. She saw Greta’s hands pushing Jarek off. Saw Greta giving her murderer permission to take her life. Saw Greta’s blood in the sand.
“Iskari? Are you all right?”
The slave’s eyes came into focus first. There was something tender in his gaze. Something worried. Out of habit, she almost told him to look away. But the truth was, no one looked at her the way this slave did: carefully, as if bandaging a wound; gently, so as not to hurt.
Asha looked back. She studied the straight line of his nose, the bumps of his cheekbones, the curve of his jaw. He was sharp and sure. Like her favorite axe.
And just like her favorite axe, he was dangerous.
Dangerous . . . but comforting.
No.
Panicking at her own thoughts, Asha pushed past him. She grabbed her helmet off the floor and lifted it over her head. It blocked out everything but the door, which she opened and stepped through, then shut behind her.
On the other side, Asha leaned against the wood, waiting for her racing heart to slow. When it did, she took the stairs two at a time, s
wearing to stay as far away from that skral as she could.
Twelve
There were officially two ways out of the city: the north gate, which faced the wild and rugged Rift, and the south gate, which faced the ruthless desert. Both were heavily guarded by soldats.
In truth, though, there was one more way out.
A secret way.
Deep below the temple lay a crypt that led to the Old One’s sacred caves. In the walls of the crypt were the ashes of the dead, sealed up in ceramic jars. But in one wall there was something else: an alcove small enough for a curious child like Asha to find on trips to the temple with her mother. Hidden in the alcove was a tunnel leading straight up into the Rift, far away from the walls where soldats stood and watched.
It was the tunnel that started the trouble with the dragons.
After Jarek made his suspicion clear, she decided not to use either of the gates. Instead, she took a vaulted stairway down into the temple’s depths. At the bottom, she pushed open the old and rotting door. The light from behind her slipped into the crypt, making her shadow stretch and grow.
Without torches to light her way, Asha kept her hand on the crypt walls, letting the cold rock guide her through the darkness. She’d spent so much of her childhood sneaking around beneath the temple that she remembered exactly how far her tunnel was: ninety-three steps through the dark and the damp.
And just beyond her tunnel? The sacred caves.
No one had set foot in them for years. Not since Asha summoned Kozu and he burned half the city to the ground. Before that, the caves were a holy place. And the sacred flame was the temple’s beating heart.
A draksor could only enter the caves after she fasted for three days and washed herself in the sacred spring. Even then, she needed to go in barefoot and she could never, ever, set foot in the inner sanctum. It was forbidden to anyone but the guardians.
It was the sanctum where Asha first saw the image of Elorma’s face. She hadn’t cared then if the Old One struck her down for her disobedience. In fact, she wanted to be struck down. That day, Asha came angry. She came to rage and scream and break things. To hurl her hate into the heart of the Old One’s holy place.
Her mother was dead, killed by the old stories, just like the raconteurs before her.
Asha’s grief made her easy prey that day. It left a fault line running through her. The moment she set foot inside the inner sanctum, the Old One found the fault line. He broke it open and buried a wicked, insatiable hunger within her. One that would turn her against her father, her people, her realm.
From then on, the old stories lived inside Asha, brimming just below the surface. It was how Kozu found her, lured by the old stories buried in her heart. Stories needing to be let out. It was how she almost destroyed the city.
Now, though, the sanctum sat empty and its flaming heart beat elsewhere.
She didn’t like to think back to the days before the fire. She didn’t like to think about how enslaved she’d been to the Old One, sneaking out of the city night after night at his bidding, to slake Kozu’s endless thirst for stories. She might not remember much of what happened the day he burned her, but she remembered the days before it. Waiting for the sun to dip below the mountains. Slipping silently over the rooftops. Taking the tunnel up into the Rift.
As she climbed through the tunnel now, Asha forced herself to remember it all. How she’d betrayed her father night after night. How she’d let herself become corrupted.
When she emerged into the Rift, surrounded by cedars and birdcall, she forced herself to think back further than she had in years as she retraced her steps to the plains where Kozu had burned her.
Asha could see that barefoot child inside her. She could hear the stories spilling from her lips as she ran through the moonlit Rift. She could feel that butterfly heart as her steps brought her closer to an ancient evil.
Asha hated that girl; but she needed her now. There was no room for mistakes this time. She feared if she told an old story aloud, it would summon whatever dragon was within hearing distance. And Asha didn’t have time to deal with another dragon. Asha needed Kozu and only Kozu. Remembering was the best way to find him.
By the time the sun started to go down, Asha hadn’t yet reached the plains. It was getting difficult to see, so she found a small clearing, unrolled her sleeping pack, and stripped off her armor.
She didn’t dare light a fire. Instead, she pulled a thick wool tunic out of the pack she’d brought from the palace and donned it to keep warm. The days might be blistering hot, but nights in the Rift could freeze a hunter to death.
Asha wasn’t afraid to close her eyes. Over the years, she’d taught herself to sleep lightly and to wake at the slightest sounds. Even if something did find her sleeping, Asha was the most dangerous thing in the Rift.
There was nothing to be afraid of.
The cavernous darkness of sleep melted into dreams. Asha dreamed of a cave where smoke stung her throat. She heard the crackle and snap of fire in the distance, felt its heat sink into her skin. Louder than the fire were the stories, bright and swarming. They were so loud, it was difficult to block them out.
Asha knew exactly where she was. And she knew before she saw him exactly who awaited her.
Elorma stared into the flames as she arrived, as if reading something inscribed there. When she stepped into the firelight, he raised his eyes to her face and pushed his hood back.
“I thought I made the Old One’s command perfectly clear,” he said gruffly. “The slayers were to be used only for righting wrongs.”
“I was righting a wrong,” Asha said, thinking of the young dragon she killed. “What greater wrong is there to right?”
His lip curled. As if he tasted something sour. “Really, Asha. All this dragon hunting is eroding your imagination.”
Asha’s temper flared. She didn’t have time for nonsense.
“The Old One can try all he likes to stop me, but I’m going to find Kozu. And when I do, I’m going to kill him.”
“You’re right about the first part,” he said. “But we’ll have to see about the second.”
A loud crack broke the silence. Like a branch breaking beneath the weight of a heavy footstep. But it must have been the fire, because there were no trees here. Trees didn’t grow in caves.
“The Old One bestows his second gift tonight. And just like his first, this one comes with a command.” Elorma rose. “You must keep it from harm.”
Something hissed in the darkness. The hair on Asha’s arms rose.
This isn’t real, she told herself. This is just a dream.
But it wasn’t a dream. And she wasn’t really in a cave, safe below the earth. She was in the Rift, sleeping and exposed.
And she knew before she opened her eyes, something was there with her.
Thirteen
Asha woke. It took a moment for her sight to adjust to the darkness. When it did, there was a single yellow eye, slit through the middle, staring down at her.
Asha’s heartbeat quickened with fear. Knowing better than to draw her slayers, Asha reached for her axe. She slid out of her sleeping pack and silently got to her feet.
A series of sharp clicks issued out of the darkness, giving Asha a sense of just how far away this dragon was. She took a slow step back, trying to remember the size of this clearing, and where the trees stopped. But the dark had already descended when she’d made her camp.
The eye disappeared, followed by movement in the trees. Branches snapped. Leaves hissed as a scaly hide brushed past `them. Asha’s hand tightened around the handle of her axe, provoking a growl from the dragon.
A heartbeat later, Asha ducked and rolled as a stream of fire lit up the clearing, catching on dried leaves and branches, revealing the biggest dragon she’d ever seen. So big, it could fill Jarek’s courtyard.
There was only one dragon that didn’t need the power of the old stories to breathe fire: Kozu, the First Dragon. The wellspring of stories.
> It had been eight years since they stood face-to-face. Asha had been terrified and trembling then. Nothing more than a child.
Now she was grown and had hundreds of kills to her name.
The First Dragon circled her. In the light of the fires all around her, Asha saw the hideous scar running through his blind eye and down his cheek, hooking just below his jaw. A scar that mirrored her own.
She settled into her fighting stance, ready for this. More than ready. Tonight she would right her wrongs. Tonight, she would put an end to the old ways for good. She would bring back the head of the dragon that had burned her and left her for dead and drop it at her father’s feet.
Something whistled fast through the air. With a sickening thud, bright pain lit up Asha’s side. She flew sideways with the force of Kozu’s pronged tail, now embedded in her ribs.
The breath rushed out of her lungs as she hit the ground. Lying on her back, the world spun around her.
Always know where a dragon’s tail is.
It was the first rule of hunting.
Asha brought her axe up and swiftly down. Kozu screamed. The smell of hot, coppery dragon blood made her nostrils flare.
It hurt twice as much when Kozu pulled his tail out.
Blood poured out of her. Asha felt the wool tunic soak it up. She got to her feet to find the fires dying all around her.
Kozu hissed in the darkness, his tail no longer lashing. He was hurt and bleeding, just as she was.
Asha circled, waiting for him to misstep. Her whole right side was soaked. Her head swam. She was losing blood too fast. She needed to stanch it.
Another whoosh and Asha ducked as Kozu’s tail sailed over her head, rustling her hair. Drops of hot blood flecked her skin as it went.
Kozu stopped circling. Asha’s heart beat loud and sluggish in her ears. Kozu hissed again, but didn’t strike.
Three steps. That’s all it would take to plunge her axe into his chest. Three steps.
This was her chance.
The Last Namsara Page 9