The Last Namsara

by Kristen Ciccarelli

When Torwin clicked to Kozu, their fingers slid apart. Kozu spread his wings. Safire stepped back into the terrace archway, concealing herself. Kozu took a running start and dived into the air. Asha lurched forward as the wind whistled past, then quickly looked back, but the shadows had swallowed Safire. Asha looked beyond her, to the flat rooftops and copper domes of the palace, then to the royal quarters. A lamp burned in one of its windows. If Asha squinted, she could see someone standing there, looking out into the night, watching as a criminal and a skral escaped into the early morning sky.

  Fifty

  They didn’t stop flying until the sky darkened again that night and the stars clustered above them. Even then, Torwin seemed agitated. Like he wanted to fly straight to the scrublands without stopping. Despite the creases of exhaustion next to his mouth, despite the dark smudges beneath his eyes, despite the way he hunched over a paltry meal of nuts and too-hard bread, he wanted to keep going, to put as much distance between them and the horrors they’d left behind.

  As Asha watched him, she thought of Shadow. Torwin would have seen Jarek strike that killing blow. He would have felt the moment Shadow’s life winked out. He would be feeling the absence of his dust-red companion even now.

  Asha didn’t know how to soothe such a hurt. Didn’t know if it could be soothed.

  She sat close to him while they ate. Let her thigh fall against his. Smiled at him when he looked at her.

  But even when he laced his fingers through hers or brushed his thumb across her cheek or stared at her like he couldn’t believe they were free, the silence still shimmered. And the space between them felt littered with loose threads. Threads streaming from an unfinished tapestry.

  “I’ll stay up and watch,” she said after they set up the tent.

  Torwin shook his head. “I won’t sleep anyway. You get some rest.” He grabbed his lute, then kissed her scarred cheek before heading toward a grassy dune. “Tomorrow will be another long day.”

  Asha watched him walk away until the darkness swallowed him up.

  She climbed into the tent.

  After a moment, she heard a familiar sound. The glossy, golden sound of his lute. Asha sat perfectly still, listening. And then exhaustion overcame her.

  Lying down, she closed her eyes and let Torwin’s song lull her to sleep.

  The smell of smoke and ash woke her. When she sat up, Elorma crouched over a fire just big enough to illuminate his face.

  Too tired to protest whatever it was he wanted from her now, she went to sit next to him.

  “Aren’t you done with me yet?” Curling her knees up to her chest, she hugged them hard to keep from shivering. “I did what the Old One wanted. What else is there?”

  Elorma smiled, his eyes reflecting the fire. The hollow places of his face were darkened by shadow. “Much more, I’m afraid. Your work is just beginning, Namsara.”

  Namsara.

  That name. It would take some getting used to.

  Elorma cracked his knuckles and rose to his feet. “I’m here to bestow your final gift. The gift of a hika.”

  Asha’s grip on her knees loosened. A hika. Like Willa was to Elorma.

  “W-what?” she stammered.

  Elorma ignored her. “A hika is formed just for you. Like your slayers were formed for your hands. Like the sky was formed for the earth. Come and look upon his face.”

  But Asha stayed where she was, hugging her legs harder. “I’m an outlaw,” she said. “I’m guilty of regicide. Whoever you choose will be sentenced to a life of danger. I’d rather you leave him be.”

  Beneath all these things, though, lay a deeper truth: Asha loved someone else.

  She rose to her feet.

  She never meant to look into the fire. She only meant to walk away.

  But her gaze snagged on a face in the flames.

  Asha stepped closer. A boy peered out at her. He had stars etched into his skin. He had eyes as sharp as her own two slayers.

  Asha’s heart slammed against her ribs.

  She stepped back.

  The Old One knew just as well as she what happened when draksors coupled with skral. Those kinds of stories only ever ended in tragedy.

  “You can’t do this to him.” Asha looked to Elorma. “It’s a death sentence.”

  Being with Asha meant putting his life at risk.

  “Death is no stranger to this one.” Elorma rose to face her. “And doesn’t he get a choice in the matter?”

  He has no choice, she thought. If the Old One commands it, there isn’t a choice.

  And Torwin had spent his whole life being forbidden from making his own choices.

  “I can’t,” she whispered. “I won’t be another master he has to submit to.”

  She turned away, her footsteps sinking into the cold sand.

  “Ask him who he dreams of at night,” Elorma called after her. “Ask him who he’s dreamed of every night for the past eighteen years of his life.”

  Asha stopped walking.

  Torwin’s voice rose up in her mind. I used to think she was some kind of goddess, he’d told her in the temple room, explaining his recurring nightmare. I used to think she appeared to me because she was choosing me for some great destiny.

  And then, again, in her brother’s war camp: They’re always about you.

  Elorma stood behind her now. She could feel his shadow stretch across her back.

  “Do you know why I recognized Willa the first time I saw her?”

  Asha turned and looked up into the First Namsara’s eyes.

  “Because I’d spent my life dreaming of her.”

  When he smiled, it was as if two suns burned warm and bright out of his eyes. “Willa chose love in the end.” Very gently, he placed one strong hand on Asha’s shoulder. “Now it’s time for you to choose. Because, despite what you think, you do have a choice. And so does he.”

  Asha thought of something her brother told her once. If Rayan hadn’t been selfish, Dax said, if he hadn’t pursued Lillian, they’d both be alive today. But saying that denied Lillian’s choice in the matter. It denied Lillian her power. And what’s more: saying that meant the only thing to be learned from their story was that death is stronger than love.

  Asha didn’t believe that.

  “And afterward,” Elorma said, “there’s more work to be done. Stories to be hunted down. A realm to be made whole again.”

  The fire roared behind Elorma as he smiled tenderly down on Asha.

  “You and I will see each other again soon, Namsara.”

  The fire went out, plunging Asha into darkness.

  She stood still for a long time, lost in the swirling storm of her thoughts.

  Namsara.

  The rare desert flower that could heal any ailment.

  That’s what Asha was.

  Fifty-One

  Asha woke to the sound of a song swelling in the air. She lay still for several heartbeats, letting the sound melt inside her, filling her up with longing.

  With the First Namsara’s words in her heart, she rose and followed the song.

  Asha found the lute player in the sand, a silhouette against a sky so full of stars, it looked silver. She watched the roll of his shoulders, the dip of his head.

  The sight of him held her transfixed.

  He must have sensed someone watching, because the song stopped and he looked up from his strings, casting his gaze into the darkness.

  “Asha? Is that you?”

  Asha remained where she was.

  He started to play again. A different song. Its familiar tune jolted her. It was the same unfinished song he’d been humming in the Rift. The same song he’d been trying to work out while Asha fell asleep in his tent.

  At some point, he’d finished it and he was playing it now. As he played, Asha could feel him staring into the spot where she stood.

  “Greta used to say,” he said as he played, “that every one of us is born with a song buried deep in our hearts. A song all our own. And our mission
in life is to find that song.”

  His song was sharp like a knife and tender as his fingers stitching up her wounds. It dived into darkness, then soared toward the light. It was itself a kind of story—one that lured Asha out of the shadows.

  Slowly, Torwin moved toward her.

  “Tell me again about your nightmares,” she said.

  Fingers still plucking strings, he took another step and obliged her.

  “They weren’t always nightmares. They were just dreams, once.” She felt him smile in the darkness, thinking about them. “Dreams about a scarred girl who rode a black dragon.”

  The music stopped as he lowered his lute. It fell to the sand with a soft thud.

  “And then you got burned. That’s when I knew, for certain, the girl I’d been dreaming about was you. That’s when the dreams turned into nightmares.”

  Asha swallowed.

  “I know what it means,” he said. “I’ve always known what it means.”

  Asha felt her eyes burn with tears.

  “I’ll put you in danger,” she said, admitting her deepest fear.

  “Haven’t we been through this? I love danger.”

  “Torwin.”

  “Asha.” His voice went soft and careful. “I’ve only ever wanted three things. A lute of my own, to make music with. A life of my own, to do what I want with. And the girl I’ve been dreaming about for as long as I can remember. A girl who was always out of reach. . . .”

  He reached for her, his fingers curling around her arms, closing the gap between them, tying up their loose and fraying threads.

  “You could die,” she whispered.

  “Everything dies,” he whispered back. “I’m afraid of so much more than dying.”

  A lump gathered in her throat. Thinking of Willa, she said, “Then may Death send his worst.”

  Torwin cupped her neck with his hand, touching his forehead to hers.

  “Cold to freeze the love in my heart.”

  His thumb, warm from playing, brushed along her jaw.

  “Fire to burn my memories to ash.”

  He pressed his mouth against her throat, making Asha fumble her words.

  “W-wind to force me through the gates.”

  He trailed kisses up her neck, and Asha had to close her eyes against the pull of him.

  “Time to wear my loyalty away.”

  The kisses stopped.

  “I’ll wait for you, Torwin—”

  The final words were lost in the softness of his mouth.

  Several heartbeats later, Asha broke away, needing to finish. “I’ll wait for you at Death’s gate.”

  And there was the tapestry: its threads no longer fraying.

  There was the tapestry: finished, whole.

  “Do you promise?” he whispered, seizing her wrists and pulling her close.

  She nodded.

  “Ah, but you made me another promise once and you never came through on it. So how can I trust you?”

  Asha frowned. “What promise?”

  He placed her hands around his neck, then slid his arms around her waist as a honeyed hum rose up from the depths of his throat. It was the song he’d just been playing. While he hummed, he led her in the steps of a slow, three-beat dance.

  “Torwin?”

  “Mmm?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Dancing with you.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Well, you’re about to learn, aren’t you.”

  Asha smiled as his song filled the air around them. She laughed as she tripped over him when he tried to lead her in the steps. Soon though, her feet found the rhythm. Soon, she was twirling through the sand.

  He pulled her back.

  “You’re beautiful and precious and good,” he whispered. “And I love you.”

  Asha looked up at him, there beneath the stars, and found herself starting to believe these things were true.

  Maybe Greta was right. Maybe everyone did have a song in them—or a story. One all their own. If that were so, Asha had found hers.

  And here she stood at the beginning of it.

  Acknowledgments

  I started writing this book when I was seventeen. Back then I was enamored of girls like Mulan, Eowyn, Xena, and Princess Mononoke. I desperately craved stories in which young women got to wield weapons or go to war or be fierce. I didn’t realize it then, but what I was looking for were girls breaking out of a cultural script that dictated who and what they could be. I was tired of the narrative that said women were inherently weaker, inherently victims. I didn’t see myself that way, nor did I see the women around me that way.

  I wanted something different. So I started writing this story.

  But writing the story is just the beginning. Something you don’t see when you pick up a book from the shelf is just how many people were involved in getting it onto that shelf. Though my name might be on the cover, The Last Namsara was by no means a solitary feat. These are the people who helped me make it what it is today. . . .

  First and foremost: Heather Flaherty, my world brightener and fiercely optimistic agent. Thank you for fighting so hard for me and this book. I think we were waiting for you.

  Kristen Pettit, my sweet and inimitable editor. I adore you. Thank you not only for making my books better, but for being so supportive of me.

  The amazing team at the Bent Agency, including Jenny Bent (for making so many dreams come true), Victoria Cappello (for having endless patience with me and my pesky questions), and most especially my UK agent, Gemma Cooper, for finding my books the perfect UK home.

  A big huge thank-you to the entire team at HarperTeen who helped turn this book into a beautiful reality, most especially: Renée Cafiero, Allison Brown, Martha Schwartz, Megan Gendell, Vincent Cusenza, Audrey Diestelkamp, Olivia Russo, Michelle Taormina (I can’t even count the hours I’ve spent staring adoringly at my cover), and Elizabeth Lynch (for being all-around amazing, but especially for writing jacket copy so beautiful it made me cry).

  The entire team at Gollancz, but especially Gillian Redfearn and Rachel Winterbottom. I’m ridiculously excited and proud to be part of the Gollancz family.

  My international coagents and foreign publishers: Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine my stories would be translated into other languages and sold in countries so far from my own. Thank you for believing in this book.

  My early readers (of various drafts): Cassandra Roach, Kayli Kinnear, Shannon Thomson, Leslie Morgenson, Amber Sundy, Andrea Brame, Rachel Stark, Emily Gref, Franny Billingsley, Traci Chee, Renée Ahdieh, Chris Cabena, Joan He, Michella Domenici, Hope Cook, Merrill Wyatt, Kamerhe Lane, Heather Smith, Amy Mathers, Tomi Adeyemi, Isabel Ibañez, Kit Grant, Leila Siddiqui, and Geoff Martin. I’m probably forgetting someone. If I am, I’m so sorry!

  Extraspecial thanks go to:

  Franny Billingsley, for teaching me everything I know about storytelling.

  Leila Siddiqui, for your honest feedback and kind help at the eleventh hour.

  Art and Myrna Bauman, for letting me use the cottage whenever I need to escape the world and just write.

  Leslie Morgenson, for telling me all those years ago that I am, in fact, a writer. You gave me the courage to go rogue.

  Heather Smith and Nan Forler, for coffee, friendship, and general mischief-making.

  My Pitch Wars cohort: I never expected to fall so hard in love with you all, but I did. It is a joy to be journeying with you.

  My Pitch Wars mentors, Traci Chee and Renée Ahdieh: Thank you for dragging me out of the hole I’d dug myself into, then believing in and championing this book. Your mentorship was one of the best things to ever happen to me. Far better than book deals.

  Brenda Drake: Thank you for working so tirelessly, thanklessly, and invisibly behind the scenes of Pitch Wars. You are a life changer.

  Michella Domenici and Joan He, for your friendship and fangirling and willingness to drop everything when I need fresh eyes and another perspec
tive. *squishes you both*

  Isabel Ibañez, for backseat conversations from Charleston to Orlando. For devouring this book “like a starving wolf.” But most of all for your love and support. Sweet friend: you are beautiful.

  Hope Cook, for always being just a text away whenever I need to a) melt into a puddle of self-pity or b) go on an angry rampage. I love you, O wise one.

  Chris Cabena, for chess games and SAGA reminders and patiently listening to me ramble through all my plot snags. I cherish you more than you know.

  Tomi Adeyemi, for your friendship, wisdom, and support. For talking me off ledges and bringing me back to the heart of things. But most of all for being so proud of me.

  Joanna Hathaway, I don’t know how I would have survived this year without you. You make me braver than I am on my own.

  Asnake Dabala, brother and dearest friend, for letting me abuse all your printing privileges. Nilimuuliza Mungu kwa ajili ya rafiki na akakuleta wewe. Thank you for always being there for me.

  My entire Cesar family: I wouldn’t be who I am today without you all. Thank you especially to Nancy McLauchlin, Mary Dejonge, and Sylvia Cesar, for teaching me everything I know about love and bravery and being true to yourself; Larry Dejonge, Brian Baldoni, and Jim McLauchlin, for making my childhood one happy adventure; Pa, for carrying me to bed every night for almost a decade (we miss you); Bobbi, for making my lunches, driving me to appointments, teaching me how to braid my hair . . . you’ve always been so much more than a grandmother. Belonging to all of you is one of the greatest joys of my life. Thank you for raising me.

  Jordan Dejonge, for being my coconspirator in all things growing up, but mostly: writing, adventuring, and figuring out how to be human together. I love you.

  Dad, for always supporting and defending me. I’m so proud to be your daughter. Jolene, for always being proud of my art-making. Nathan and Graeme, for being two beacons of light in my life.

  Mum, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Your love is a bright, fierce thing and the most precious gift I’ve ever been given.

  Joe, for never thinking to doubt me. For talking me through this and everything else. For always, always bringing me back to myself. Now let’s go chase your dream, my love.