The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (21 page)

BOOK: The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy)
2.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

"You
told him you saw me die," Ashlyn said, remembering what Skye had said that
rainy night in Storim. "You lied about my death for the reward."

"Not
for the reward!" Kou protested. "I would never lie for credits."

Ashlyn
raised her eyebrows. "Then what?"

"I
have…" He faltered. "Visions. Of things to come. My mother called it
foresight, but I don't know what it is. I've had it since I was a child. I can
see things before they happen. Sometimes seconds before- sometimes months-
sometimes
years
. Long before I ever heard about the reward, I saw you in
the Heavenly City."

"Being
killed by a wolf, I'm guessing," Ashlyn said. She didn't attempt to keep
any of the acid out of her tone; none of this psychic stuff had ever appealed
to her, and it would take a lot more than some guy telling her it was true to
make her believe in it. "At least, that's what I heard."

Kou
forced a smile. "It must have been disconcerting.”

The
experience of finding out she was widely regarded as dead had actually been
less
weird than finding out Kou was Devlyn, but the transformation she'd just seen with
Tag mattered a lot more than changing names. She simply stared at him now,
waiting impatiently for him to continue.

"Yes,
by a wolf," he went on quietly. "I didn't know who you were, before.
But when I heard the reports inquiring about your death-"

"I'm
not buying this," Skye interrupted. "Telling Li that Ashlyn was dead
wasn't coincidence. You went to great lengths to make him believe you. You even
presented him with Ashlyn's shuriken as proof."

"Yeah!"
Ashlyn said, remembering suddenly that the bo shuriken had been missing for
years. "Someone stole it from me in Storim.
You
must have stolen
it! You
lied-
you said you'd never been to Storim before you stowed away
on the airship!"

"Calm
down," said Kou. He held up his hands in a defensive gesture. "I didn't
steal your shuriken, and I certainly never gave it to Lord Li. He took it away
from a peddler that came to Toryn. He said he recognized it as yours. It only
served to confirm what I'd already told him."

"A
peddler
stole my shuriken?" Ashlyn shrieked, jumping to her feet.
"He tried to
sell
it? Did it still have any stanes in it? Did you
get it back?”

"I'm
trying to finish so you can get some rest, if you would stop
interrupting," Kou replied, standing and grabbing her elbow before she
fell over. "You're exhausted. Sit down."

She
sat. "Okay, fine. Tell the rest of the story. I'll listen."

Kou
looked at Skye, who shrugged noncommittally. "All right," he said.
"I'll start with my clan. You probably know that the people of Lunai
severed ties with all other Toryn clans years ago."

"Right
around the time that my dad started turning Toryn into a tourist trap,"
Ashlyn remembered out loud. "Yours must have been one of those clans who
didn't agree with- um…" She bit her lip. "Sorry. Go on."

Kou
shifted on the mat, sitting back so he could brace his hands on the floor
behind him. It should have made him look more relaxed. Instead he seemed
awkward, uncomfortable. "We were virtually cut off from all avenues of
communication with the outside world. My clan and I didn't even know you were
missing until one of the lesser lords came to us and asked if we had any
information. When I told him about my vision, he brought me here." He
glanced around, as if he were seeing Ashlyn's home for the first time.
"Your father liked me. I was chosen as a potential heir. So I
stayed."

That
must have been convenient, Ashlyn wanted to say. But she kept her mouth shut.

"It
wasn't as easy as I had anticipated," Kou admitted. "I…I was one of
many, lost among the other selected potentials and eager to prove myself to the
Lords. Elder Lord Li seemed to hold me in great esteem, and I, foolish as I
was, tried my utmost to capitalize on his favor." He met Ashlyn's gaze.
"He used to tell me that I had your eyes. I think that, even with my power
of foresight and the…other reasons I was chosen, he would not have paid me any
heed if I did not in some way resemble you. He told me that if you did not
return, there could be nothing he would delight in more than allowing me to
assume leadership of Toryn."

Ashlyn
stared at the floor, deliberately ignoring the lump in her throat, the tears
that stung at the backs of her eyes. "I understand," she said softly.

Kou
shifted, glancing sideways at Skye- or maybe at Skye’s sword, which was
balanced against the wooden beam next to the blond. The giant sword and its
owner looked formidable enough on its own, but the magic-charged stanes that
gleamed from its hilt added to its deadly intimidation factor.

"I'd
been here less than a month before Lord Li showed me
shift
." Kou drummed his fingers nervously on the floor,
hunched over and looking more vulnerable by the moment. Almost like a child who
was confessing to a lie. Ashlyn stayed still, waiting for him to continue.

Finally
he said, "This was a new magic, one that wasn't in the scrolls. Lord Li
made me keep it a secret." Here he looked at Ashlyn, his gaze pleading.
"I thought that we should take it to Cosmea and let the scholars study it,
find out if there was any history of its use. I couldn't believe that he had
found a magic that no one had ever discovered before- it just didn't seem
possible. But Lord Li said that we had to hide it, keep it locked away, and
Drago help me, I let him make that decision. I let him keep
shift
for himself while I tried to find
mention of it in the Elders' scrolls."

Kou
shook his head, miserably tracing patterns on the mat beneath him. "It was
a mystery to us all, you see. The other Lords had tried to use
shift
and could make nothing of it, and
yet Lord Li could shape-shift with ease. One by one, each of the Lords
endeavored to use the magic, but none could…except for him." He looked up,
smoke-dark eyes hollow. "In the early months, I was forbidden from
attempting the magic. After the Lords failed, Lord Li gave his consent for me to
try."

"Makes
sense," Ashlyn said. Her heart was pounding and her mouth was dry, but she
refused to show any emotion. The way Kou was talking about her father, the fact
that he wasn't here to hold her and tell her that everything would be all right
because he was her dad and he could make it okay again, was somehow scarier
than the sickening display she'd seen in the basement. But it all seemed so
impossible, so surreal.

"I
hate the feeling of shape-shifting," Kou admitted after a long pause. Done
with drawing shapes on the floor, he had started to twist the long ends of his
belt into complex knots. "Although it is really just a simple physical
reconfiguration, your entire body feels as though it is being torn to pieces.
I'm sure you could see it with Tag."

"Yes,
it was fairly obvious," Skye said, staring unsympathetically at the
ceiling. "So go on. Why were you and Lord Li the only ones who could use
the magic? And if it was just the two of you, then how do you explain
that
?"
He jerked his chin towards the stairs, presumably referring to Tag's
transformation.

Kou wet
his lips, eyes flicking back and forth from Skye to Ashlyn. "It took some
time to understand why some could channel the magic, and some could not,"
he said. "I continued with my research until at last I found mention of
the
shift
magic."

"It's
been discovered before?" Skye said, raising an eyebrow. Taking his sword
in one hand, he slid down until he was sitting with his back against the
support beam, and laid the weapon carefully across his lap.

"Yes.
Well- not in so many words. It was not called
shift
in a century long ago; in fact, it is not even mentioned in
our Toryn scrolls. I read of it in a translated text from Cosmea, which spoke
of an appearance-altering magic, so powerful and so dangerous that even the
Angels themselves feared it. To protect themselves, and future generations,
they buried it deep in the mountains of Na Michico."

"So
it- the magic- didn't start out here in Toryn?" Ashlyn asked, eyebrows
knitting. She had no idea where this was going.

"Not
originally, no. In the text it says that one of the reasons the Angels were
afraid of this magic was because its powers not only altered one's physical
appearance, but one's mental capacities also. It could evolve itself to match
the person who cast it- in the first instance, the Angels. They were, and as
far as I know still
are
the only true masters of
shift
."

He
cleared his throat before going on, "The original Angels, unchanged by
life on this planet, could wield it without danger, but later generations were
too weak- too
human
to successfully maintain control over the magic. It
began to change them. At first they dismissed it as something trivial. A
passing illness, a head cold- whatever seemed fitting at the time. Eventually
however, the infection worsened, and they realized the truth. Without the
immunity of pure immortal blood, the magic began to overpower them. It began to
control
them."

Ashlyn
had heard stories about Kresmir's beginnings. She knew that all humans were
descended from the Angels, at least in theory, and that life on the planet had
been simple and unchallenging enough that the lesser members of the race
eventually devolved into what they were now. Humanity. Personally, she'd pretty
much always taken offense to that theory. But there wasn’t enough proof to
dispel the lingering rumors.

"Okay,"
she said, keeping her tone light. "I got the history lesson. Now tell me
why you, my father and Tag are the lucky ones. Why doesn't everyone else get to
wield this magic?"

"I
was just getting to that." Kou smiled faintly at her, but there was no
humor in his expression. "
Shift
has been buried beneath Na Michico for the better part of two thousand years.
The magic has already proven itself an evolving force. It could not lay dormant
for such a length of time without some sort of mutation."

Ashlyn
nodded. It wasn’t unheard of. Some magics grew more powerful with time. Some
stanes evolved into a different kind of magic entirely. It wasn’t common, but
it also wasn’t impossible.

"Based
on what I have read and researched on magic adaptation," Kou said, "I
believe that
shift
has made itself
indigenous to Toryn, or more specifically, to the Li bloodline. Thousands of
years ago, it called to the Angels, and they discovered it. This time it called
to your father, and he was the one who found it, which was the magic's
intention all along." He swallowed as he stared at Ashlyn. "The magic
is calling to you now- it’s why you feel ill.
Shift
has changed itself so that only a Toryn whose veins flow with
the blood of the Li clan is able to wield it."

Blood
of the Li clan.

Ashlyn
could have babbled for hours about how ridiculous the initial part of Kou's
proposed theory was. He spoke as if the magic was thinking for itself, which
was of course utterly impossible. But those five words-
blood of the Li
clan-
stopped her cold. She stared blankly at Kou for a single heartbeat,
then another. It took three more, and a sudden roaring in her ears, before
Ashlyn realized what he had meant.

The
world abruptly tilted, and she started to her feet.

"The
blood of the Li clan," she said, "is
my
blood. My father's
blood."

He said
nothing, perhaps waiting for her to realize what she was determined to deny.
But Ashlyn was just warming up.

"My
blood," she growled, "is the blood of kings. Of ninjas and emperors
and- and
me
- and you can't…you can't
possibly
claim to have even
a toehold in
my
gene pool!" She knew she sounded like an absolute
snob, but her righteous pride was more important to her than anything, and
somehow she couldn't stop herself from halting this ridiculous charade. "I
can trace my ancestors back a hundred generations. I know my grandfather's
grandfather and
every frigging one
of his cousins by name and
birthright. The line has never been broken. You are not Li. You are
not
,
because it is simply
not
possible!" She turned away from Kou and
began to pace the length of what used to be her bedroom, fuming.

"Ashlyn,"
Kou said, standing and moving towards her.

"What's
more," Ashlyn continued, her voice rising with each word, "is that
you are
younger
than me.
Younger.
Don't try to deny it. You can't
be more than- what, sixteen? Seventeen?”

"Seventeen,"
he said, "but, Ashlyn-" He tried to touch her arm. She shrugged him
off and promptly stumbled over a steel trap, a remnant from the days she had
lived here, which thankfully had already been tripped by some unlucky soul.
Seeing it there and knowing that Kou had been staying in her house under false
pretenses just made Ashlyn angrier.

"This
is just ridiculous! I'm appalled you would even suggest a thing like
that!" she spluttered, slapping a hand to her forehead as if it should be
so completely
obvious
. "My father and I are the last of the Li
bloodline."

BOOK: The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy)
2.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Merit Badge Murder by Leslie Langtry
The Quest by Mary Abshire
William and Harry by Katie Nicholl
Love Anthony by Lisa Genova
Blood Rose by Margie Orford
Burnt River by Karin Salvalaggio
The Centurion's Wife by Bunn, Davis, Oke, Janette
Incansable by Jack Campbell


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024