The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (12 page)

There was a muffled cry, the clear
ting
of
something metal hitting the ground, and then the shuriken came flying back to
Ashlyn, from the left side this time. She leapt up to catch it expertly,
hitting the ground and striking battle stance in one fluid motion.

"That should buy us some time," she said,
hardly noting Kou's expression of admiration as she re-secured the shuriken
onto her back. "You stay out here and hold them off. I'm going to get my
horse."

She turned to face the airship again, stepping back a
few feet. Drawing a deep breath, she started running straight towards the hull-
and sprang up, hooking her hands over a jutting panel and executing a neat flip
up onto the deck.

There was no time to catch her breath. Ashlyn stood,
feeling a little light-headed from the aerial somersault, and ran to the hatch.
She didn't waste time with the stairs inside, instead vaulting off the balcony
to the deck below and making a mad dash for the stable.

"Hey Suki," she said, unlatching the stall
door. She didn't dare take the extra minutes to put on a saddle, but she
grabbed the bridle off a hook and slipped it over the sleepy mare's head,
hoping desperately that Kou could ride bareback decently enough not to drag her
off during their escape.

Suki nickered tiredly as she followed Ashlyn up the
ramp to the hatch. When they stepped out into the cold night air, however, the
chestnut mare perked up immediately, her hooves clicking rhythmically on the
deck as she pranced in place. Ashlyn hooked her saddlebags over her arm,
already regretting the absence of an actual saddle, and grabbed onto a handful
of mane. After the leap she'd just made onto the airship's deck, hopping onto
Suki's back was a piece of cake.

She offered a brief prayer to the heavens for their safety,
fisting her hands in the flaxen mane as she urged Suki towards the edge of the
deck.

True to form, the little mare did not hesitate,
muscles bunching as she leaped over the railing. It wasn't a difficult fall for
a horse of her caliber, but when her hooves touched the rocky surface of the
cliff beside the airship, they slid, and the horse skidded to one side and then
the other as they descended the cliff‘s steep face, fighting to keep her
balance as
 
Ashlyn clung for dear life.

Finally, at the bottom of the cliff, Suki managed to
gain her footing and halted unsteadily, chest heaving. Ashlyn glanced at Kou,
who was standing just beyond the edge of the circle of light, sword at the
ready. "Kou! Come on!" she yelled, motioning him over with her hand-
as if her words weren't obvious enough.

He stared wide-eyed at her- probably wondering if
she'd lost her mind, jumping off the deck like that, Ashlyn thought wryly- but
seemed to snap out of it at the sound of her voice. Shifting his sword to his
left hand, he ran towards her. Running on the slippery grass proved no
difficulty for the light-footed ninja.

Ashlyn started as a black-clad figure emerged from the
shadows to her left. "Look out!" she exclaimed- spotting the figure’s
ankle-length coat just moments after her words.

It was Drake Lockhart.

Drake
had
been throwing all those spells at them? No, there was no
way
. It
couldn't have been him. As he moved further into the light, Ashlyn realized
that he was dragging someone with him- dead or unconscious, a Toryn ninja,
wearing the trademark green mask. It must have been the man Ashlyn had hit with
her shuriken.

Kou turned, his hand coming up, the sword poised above
his head.

"No!" Ashlyn yelped, digging her heels into
Suki's sides and spurring the horse forward. "Don't!"

The ninja paid her no heed- no surprise, really; in
his mind this was the man who had been trying to kill them both, why should he
spare Drake's life? Drawing his arm back, he threw the sword at the gunslinger.

Anticipating his move already, Ashlyn snatched at her
shuriken, yanking it free of its straps, and tossed it on the downswing. The
two weapons flashed towards each other in the light like rogue comets, but
Ashlyn's aim was
low-
no no no- and the shuriken merely glanced off the
sword, deterring the larger weapon only inches off-target before planting
itself uselessly in the ground.

The sword gleamed once, twice, seemingly moving in
slow motion as Ashlyn watched it close in on Drake. The red-eyed man had no time
to draw his weapon, but his left arm moved lightning-fast, releasing the
unconscious ninja and coming up to block the machete.

The razor-sharp weapon sliced across the silver glove
with an awful grinding sound. For a horrible moment there was only the repetition
of her own frantic breathing and the sound of Suki's hooves on the grass, and
Ashlyn thought he'd done it, he'd saved himself when she couldn't- but then
there was a sickening wet
thud
, and Drake lowered his arm, slowly, shock
etched across his features.

The blade was embedded in his shoulder.

"
Drake!
" Ashlyn shrieked. Her blood
turned to ice in her veins as she watched her friend fall to his knees. She was
off her horse in an instant and running before her feet knew they'd touched
ground.

Kou caught her with an arm around the waist, less than
ten feet from where Drake knelt. "We have to leave," he said, using
his opposite hand to grab Suki's reins.

"We're not going anywhere, you stupid…stupid
jerk!
"
she screamed, and thrashed against him. "
Drake!
Look at me!"

She was panicking so badly that even her inherent
fighting skills fled her, and if she'd had any sense she would have realized
that the way she struggled futilely against Kou now was an insult to her ninja
heritage. Her eyes fell on the shuriken, half-buried in the grassy soil just a
few feet away. A
heal
stane glittered cruelly at her from the weapon‘s
slots.

Drake reached up and pulled the sword from his
shoulder, dropping it into the grass beside him. Then, as if the simple
movement had been too much for him, the gunslinger slumped forward, barely
supporting himself from falling completely with one hand on the ground in front
of him.

Reality began its slow creep into Ashlyn's mind as she
watched Drake, still fighting Kou's insistence on leaving, though her heart
wasn't in it. The wound was not deep- at least not deep enough to kill a
vampire, she hoped- but it was still her fault. Skye would blame the injury on
her, and likely throw her in the airship's holding cells besides.

There was no way she could stay behind now. If she
didn't leave, then there would be no way to prove herself to FLD, ever again.

Kou wisely took advantage of Ashlyn's distractedness
to shove her up onto Suki’s back before jumping up behind her, clutching her
leather saddlebags- which she'd dropped in her desperation- in one hand and the
reins in the other. He clucked to the mare, urging her on with his heels, and
Suki obediently moved forward, taking them out of the circle of light
surrounding the airship and into the darkness of night.

"Is this west?" he hissed in her ear.

She didn't answer for a moment, and Kou thumped her
awkwardly in the ribs with his hand, his movements halted by the heavy
saddlebags he held. "Is this west?" he repeated harshly.

"Yes," Ashlyn forced herself to answer. Her
voice was thin, reedy.

There was a silence. Ashlyn felt the tears start to
course down her cheeks, the sharp hollowness in her chest, and she folded
forward, leaning against Suku’s neck and burying her fingers in the horse’s
thick mane.

It was a long time before Kou spoke again. When he
did, the tone of his voice had changed. "He was your friend," he
said. There was no intonation at the end, no hint of question. He knew.

Ashlyn closed her eyes, suddenly wishing she'd never
left Endro.

"Yes."

They rode on, as the sky began to brighten with the
promise of dawn.

Chapter 7

Electric

During her father's reign as Elder Lord of Toryn, he
had been afforded a certain celebrity status, and as a result both he and
Ashlyn were regarded with wary respect, and a kind of awestruck admiration
reserved only for those who were deemed royalty.

It had been different when her mother was alive.

Ashlyn’s most precious memories were from the time
before Susyn Li had passed away. She held them close to her heart, loving even
the vaguest recollection for the brief insight it provided into the life of her
mother. Susyn had always seemed a little sad, saving her smiles only for
Ashlyn. Susyn’s orphan nephew, Soryl, had been a permanent fixture in the Li
home for much of Ashlyn’s childhood.

After Cosmea fell and the reality of the war became
apparent, Ashlyn’s mother had seemed to wither away. Ashlyn had been intensely
grateful for Restlyn’s presence, particularly after Susyn was killed and Soryl
was taken during an invasion by the DEMON army. A few years later, however,
Restlyn had been Scorned by Lord Li, and Ashlyn was alone.

Her loneliness had heavily influenced her decision to
leave Toryn when Skye asked her to join FLD. Their mission to defeat Lord
Angelo and save the sun had been Ashlyn’s first attempt at being a part of
something larger than her own petty whims and desires. For weeks she had
traveled with these people, lived with them, fought and faced death beside
them.

It would have been impossible not to care for them,
after a full-scale immersion like the one she'd gone through.

She had never wanted to hurt anybody, certainly not
her friends, and least of all Drake, who had already suffered enough pain and
betrayal to ruin a dozen lifetimes.

Ashlyn's mind at the moment was a jumble of emotions
and accusations, a mirror image of the fickle sky above them, which alternately
churned with rain clouds and collected itself to spew forth harsh, unforgiving
sunlight.

She wanted to be angry with somebody, anybody. Skye
for not trusting her, Drake for following them, Kou for throwing that stupid
sword- but she knew that in the end, when it was all sorted out, laid on the
table and glaring up at her, presumably with a typically annoying
I told you
so
look plastered on its face, the fault was hers and hers alone.

She had forsaken her birthright to travel the world,
avoided her responsibilities to gain independence. Devlyn was the Elder Lord of
Toryn because of her rash behavior. Assassins had come to Cosmea because she was
there.

And Drake Lockhart, her friend, one of her
only
friends,
lay bleeding because she hadn't been able to protect him.

Kou shifted behind her, slowing the horse to a walk
with an easy pressure on the reins. Ashlyn remembered worrying that he might not
ride well without a saddle- ha! From what she'd seen so far, he was far more
adept than most. Not her, of course. But most, especially the hopeless ones
like Aaron, who Ashlyn remembered as clinging fiercely to the saddle with a
look of sheer horror on his face, curses spilling out with the same chattering
consistency as the machine guns on the airship‘s hull, their rhythms nearly the
same (
rat-a-tat-tat
and "
Useless-horse-slow-the-heck-DOWN!
").

She was startled out of her reverie by Kou's hand on
her shoulder. He said nothing when she turned her head to look at him, simply
pointed ahead. Ashlyn followed the line of his arm, and her gaze fell on a
mountain range in the distance. Even this far away she could see the colorless
plains surrounding the jagged hills, the foliage, rock and even bare soil
taking on an unwelcoming grayish tint as it drew closer.

Eastern City, Eastern Mountains and Eastern Canyon
were actually on the western side of the western continent. The moniker was
amusing to most, but few knew the reason for the name- it had once been part of
the Toryn kingdom, before Lord Angelo had taken the land from the Toryn elders
and made it part of his domain. In relation to the island of Toryn, the Eastern
City was east, but to the rest of the world, it was just a backwards name for a
western city that always seemed to have snow, no matter what time of year.

"The Eastern Mountains," Ashlyn said. Her
voice was raspy from disuse; the last words she'd spoken had been many hours
ago, long before they had crossed the river that divided the Cosmea and Eastern
areas. It was two days' travel on foot, but Suki had cut that time in half with
her exceptional speed and endurance. Ashlyn had a feeling that they could reach
the Eastern City just after sundown if they kept the pace.

"You know this area well?" Kou asked.

Well
didn't even begin to cover it. She could find her way from Eastern City to the
town of Industry blindfolded. Granted, for the past three years she'd stayed
away from Industry for the most part, but she had traversed these hills and
plains more often than she cared to admit.

Even though Eastern City gave her the absolute
worst
case of spine shivers, Ashlyn had made an effort to go back every now and
again, partly to make sure that Drake hadn't reclaimed his oh-so-broody coffin
of doom, but mostly to check if Skye had finally made the move back to his
hometown.