The Last Namsara (Iskari #1)(13)

“I don’t dance,” she said again, pressing her hands firmly against the black silk of his shirt, trying to force space between them.

“And I don’t take no for an answer.” His hands tightened around her. His eyes seemed too hungry tonight. Like a starved animal.

Asha looked away, over Jarek’s shoulder, right into the freckled face of his slave. The skral stood in a semicircle of musicians at the center of the courtyard, their backs to the calm water of the wide basin.

While Jarek spoke, Asha watched, spellbound, as the slave’s fingers moved like spiders across the strings of his worn, pear-shaped lute. His eyes were closed in concentration, as if he’d gone somewhere else entirely, somewhere far away from this courtyard.

Sensing her gaze, the slave opened his eyes. At the sight of the Iskari staring him down, his fingers fumbled the strings. He recovered quickly, then looked to the man holding her captive. That dreamy, faraway look vanished, replaced by a scowl as dark as a storm cloud.

“Are you listening to a word I’m saying?” Jarek asked.

He sounded so far away.

For the last time that evening, the call rang out. Her name on the wind. Only this time, it echoed through the whole courtyard.

Surely, everyone can hear it, Asha thought.

But when she looked around, draksors danced and laughed and sipped their tea, oblivious.

Something was wrong. Asha could sense the wrongness buzzing in her bones. She needed to get out of here.

Asha wrenched herself from Jarek, who wasn’t expecting this kind of answer and let go more easily than usual. She stumbled, tripping over dancers as she did, and the music screeched to a halt.

The call drummed in her ears. Beat in her blood. Pushed out everything else.

Asha, Asha, Asha.

It made her dizzy. When she looked up, the eyes of Jarek’s slave were staring into hers.

Look away, she warned. But the sunset sky was rolling down now and the courtyard floor was rolling up and when Asha closed her eyes to make it stop, she felt herself sway . . . and then fall.

The slave caught her before she hit the ground.

With the room spinning around her, Asha pressed her cheek against his chest, willing it to stop.

This is what happens when you tell the old stories aloud.

It made her think of her mother—whom the stories killed. But as the darkness seeped in, it wasn’t her mother’s death that Asha remembered. It was the way it felt to be held by her.

It felt just like this.

“I have you,” said his voice at her ear. “You’re all right.”

The last sound she heard was the steady thump of a heart beating against her cheek.





The Severing

Before the great Severing, raconteurs preserved stories. These sacred storytellers told the old stories aloud: hallowed tales of the Old One, his First Dragon, and his heroic Namsaras. The raconteurs passed these stories down from father to son. They traveled from city to city, spinning words like thread before crowds of people in exchange for coin or a room or a meal. It was an honor to host a raconteur under your roof and serve him warm bread, for he was a holy man with a holy task.

After the dragons fled, the raconteurs sickened and died. The old stories began to poison their tellers, eating away at their bodies, turning on them just as the dragons turned on their riders.

But the raconteurs continued telling their stories aloud. And as they did, they continued to die. As more and more of them sickened, fear rooted itself in the heart of every draksor. This time, they didn’t turn on their neighbors. This time, they shuttered themselves in their homes to keep safe. They feared what would happen if the old stories fell on their ears. They feared whatever plague the Old One was unleashing now.

Which is when the dragon queen stepped in.

She renounced the Old One, who’d betrayed them. She outlawed the old stories and declared that any raconteur continuing to practice his craft would be imprisoned. When it didn’t stop the raconteurs, when the high priestess herself convinced them to keep telling the stories, it fell to the dragon queen to protect her people from the Old One’s wickedness.

She did three things.

First, she stripped the high priestess of power.

Second, she amended her law. Standing in the public square, the dragon queen announced to all of Firgaard that speaking the old stories aloud was now a criminal offense—one punishable by death.

And the third thing the dragon queen did?

She instilled a new sacred tradition: dragon hunting.





Five


Smoke hovered around Asha, clinging to her hair and stinging her eyes. Her breath hushed in and out like the ebb and flow of Darmoor’s tide, and with it came the bitter smack of ash.

Darkness enveloped her. The wall beneath her hand was cool and creviced. Made of rock. Just like the ground beneath her feet.

I’m dead, she thought.

But if that were true, was it the dragonfire that killed her or the stories?

Asha thought she’d been impervious to their poison effect. Ever since she first started using the stories to summon dragons, she checked—almost obsessively—for signs of detriment: rapid weight loss, unnatural exhaustion, tremors . . . But for as long as she’d been telling the old stories, Asha suffered none of those symptoms. The stories simply didn’t affect her the way they had affected her mother and the raconteurs.