Free The Killing Song: The Dragon Below Book III by Don Bassingthwaite Page A

tension in the hall. The clusters of people seemed tighter and perhaps less inclusive. Conversation was low and close, less animated than it might have been; yet the people who sang did so with such force and emphasis that it seemed as if they were trying too hard. Singe’s comments about a feeling of fear on the street came back to her. The kalashtar and Adarans gathered in the hall might not have
seemed
afraid, but they were far from being as relaxed as they should have been.
    The longer she stood still and silent by the door, the more people were beginning to notice her presence and to stare at her with an ill-concealed wariness. She forced herself to move further into the hall, trying to spot someone to talk to, someone who might be able to tell her what was going on …
    Then the choice of who to talk to was taken out of her hands altogether. “Tetkashtai—” said a voice at her side.
    The fear and tension that had stretched tight in Dandra snapped. The voice, so close and so unexpected, was like a blow. She leaped away, psionic power lifting her up to hover a handspan above the ground, ready to dart or glide in any direction. She’d left her spear in the apartment, but she was never defenseless. The humming chorus of whitefire rose around her, and the people closest to her yelped and scrambled away from the sudden display of power. The young kalashtar man who had spoken her name flinched back, his eyes startled. For an instant, he and Dandra stared at each other in mutual alarm.
    Dandra could feel her heart hammering in her chest. Now she really was the center of attention in the hall. Song and conversation had ceased. It took an effort to still her pounding heart and release the fiery power that had come so easily to her mind. The people her display had disturbed stared at her with open suspicion. “I’m sorry—” Dandra started to say and then caught herself. Tetkashtai had never apologized for anything. It hadn’t been in her nature.
    “Sit,” she said to the nearest person. “It was nothing.”
    Conversation resumed. Feeling somewhat less uncomfortable, but now vaguely guilty, Dandra sank back to the floor and faced the young man. He was just barely an adult. His face still had a youthful softness, but at the same time, his appearance was distinctive. Unlike most in the Gathering Light, his black hair had been cut short in the Brelish fashion, and he wore Brelish rather than Adaran clothing, including an open vest dyed a rich sky-blue. The wide leather bracer stitched with copper wire that wrapped around his left forearm was likewise Brelish in design, but it was the smooth black gem—a psicrystal—set into it that brought a twinge of recognition to Dandra’s mind.
    Not every kalashtar was capable of creating a psicrystal, and she had a dim recollection of a young kalashtar, his hair still long, proudly showing Tetkashtai the black crystal he had fashioned. The name of the newly-formed crystal, Cano, clung to Dandra’s memory, but it took a moment longer for her to put a name to the kalashtar. When she did, she blinked. “Munchaned,” she said. “You’re Nevchaned’s son.”
    “Call me Moon.” Munchaned’s voice had a self-conscious firmness, as if he were daring her to call him anything else—oras if he were trying to cover his moment of childish fright.
    Dandra forced herself to keep a smile from her face. “All right, Moon. What do you want?”
    “Nevchaned wants to talk. He sent me to collect you.” He jerked his head toward one of the doors that led to the Gathering Light’s private rooms.
    Dandra’s eyebrows rose. “Nevchaned wants to talk to me?” she asked. “How did he know I was here?”
    “The elders like to keep track of what’s happening around them when they meet. I’m the honored elders’ errand boy of the night so I get the privilege of fetching you.” He looked at her. “Are you going to come or not?”
    He sounded like he would be just as happy if she