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.
Maybe it was because Asha and the old stories were made of the same substance. Each’s wickedness canceling the other’s out.
But maybe she hadn’t paid enough attention. Maybe they had been killing her slowly, all along.
If I’m dead, I’ll never bring my father Kozu’s head.
If I’m dead, I’ll never have to bind myself to Jarek.
They were bittersweet thoughts.
Asha followed the smoke and ash. The deeper into this cavern she went, the more familiar her surroundings became. It wasn’t that she’d been here before. It was more like she’d been dreaming of this place all her life.
After years of keeping the stories down, this place unearthed them easily. They surged to her surface, humming and alive, whispering of the First Dragon and the holy Namsaras and the Old One himself. It made her teeth ache to hold them all back.
Her steps led her to the shadow of a man, crouched behind a small, crackling fire. When he rose, the firelight lit up his face, revealing eyes like black onyx, a bald head, and a gray beard that came to a point just below his chin. A white robe shrouded his body, the hood flipped back.
The breath flew out of Asha at the sight of him.
She knew this man. An image of him graced the walls of a room she never should have been in. As a child, she’d heard his name spoken into the dark, always in her mother’s voice.
“Elorma.” The name was a snarl in her mouth.
This was the First Namsara. The man who brought the sacred flame out of the desert and founded Firgaard. A messenger of the Old One—who had betrayed them.
“I’ve been waiting for you.” His velvet voice echoed off the cavern walls. “Come closer.”
Asha didn’t dare.
The fire blazed up between them and she lifted her hand to shield her face from its heat. Elorma smiled at her. It made her uneasy. Like the smile of a slave plotting rebellion.
“As you wish,” he said, plunging his hands into the white-hot flames.
Asha gasped, sure the fire would eat the skin from his bones. But when his hands emerged, they were unsinged and gripping two shining black blades, curved like half-moons. White fire danced up their edges and went out.
“Sacred slayers from the Old One.” He held them out to her. “Take them.”
Asha knew better than to trust him. She knew better than to accept gifts from the Old One. She kept her hands at her sides.
“I have more weapons than I’ll ever need.”
“Ah,” he said, “but these were formed just for you, Asha. They’ll settle in your hands like no other. They’ll bend to your will and cut down your enemies faster than any axe.”
How do you know about my axe?
But if he knew her name, why shouldn’t he know her weapon of choice?
“Once you hold them, you’ll want nothing else.”
Asha thought of how satisfying it would be to kill dragons with weapons like this—quick, sharp, lethal. She shook her head. It was terrible enough telling the stories aloud. But dealing directly with the Old One? That would be much worse. She could imagine the look of horror on her father’s face if he ever found out.
She took a step back.
“Are you not called Iskari?” Elorma asked. “It’s an ill-fitted title, in my opinion. Iskari was fearless and fierce. But you are cowering and afraid.”
Her gaze snapped to his. He looked godlike in the firelight. His skin shone as if with inner light, and his eyes seemed ancient. All-seeing.
She looked back to the slayers.
How rewarding would it be to stop Kozu’s heart with weapons like these. How perfect to take the tools the Old One gave her and use them against him. Just like he’d used her against her own people. Her own father.
We must take great pains to steel ourselves against wickedness, her father told her all those years ago.
True. But this time, her eyes were wide open. This time, she wouldn’t let herself be used.
Her father wouldn’t have to know until it was over. Until she’d dropped Kozu’s bloody head at his feet. By then, he would understand. He would praise her for her cleverness.
Asha reached for the slayers. Elorma smiled a slow smile. As their inlaid hilts slid against her palms, Asha’s blood crackled and sparked. White fire flickered up her arms, sealing an invisible bond. Like a bolt locking into place. He hadn’t lied. They melted into her hands, perfectly balanced, light as air.
“The gift comes with a command, of course.”
Asha looked up into grinning white teeth.
“These slayers can only be used to make wrongs right.”
“What?”
Still grinning, he said, “You and I will see each other again soon, Asha.”
And then he melted into the darkness.
Asha called after him, but Elorma was already gone. The fire flickered out. The cave was fading fast now, twisting away until the walls of the cavern rushed in to swallow her.
Asha stood alone in the dark, with stories buzzing in her ears and the hilts of holy weapons gripped hard against her palms and a bad feeling prodding at her ribs.
What have I done?
She dropped the sacred slayers into the dirt.
Six
Just before dawn, Asha woke to the smell of orange blossoms.
The night’s chill lingered. Gathering her wool blanket around her, Asha sat up and pushed aside the sheer veils of her canopied bed, squinting through the twilight that cast her room in shades of blue. She scanned the wall opposite, where her favorite weapons hung in neat rows from floor to ceiling. Mostly axes and knives. The occasional hunting dagger. And her wooden wasters—weighted weapons for sparring with Safire.
There were no curving, night-black blades.
Asha closed her eyes and exhaled.