The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (27 page)

A low
growl penetrated her consciousness, and Ashlyn looked up, focusing on the
panther-like creature that was stalking towards her. She lifted the sword and
gasped, dropping her arm as slivers of agony shot through her shoulder. Taking
the weapon in her right hand, Ashlyn struck a defensive position. Her flippant
conversation with Skye on the airship came to mind now-

What
happens if your left side is incapacitated somehow?

Then
I fight with my right.

-And
she realized suddenly how rash she'd been, training so determinedly
left-handed, working towards hair-splitting accuracy and strength, that she'd
almost completely neglected her right side. There was no way she could fight
back with her right arm, and there was almost no possibility of the
inexperienced, terrified Toryn soldiers offering any assistance.

The
panther leaped sooner than she'd anticipated. Ashlyn dropped nimbly into a
crouch, bringing the sword up to slice at the cat's belly. She rolled aside and
swallowed a wince as leaves, mud and dead grass bit into her open shoulder
wound. Steadying herself, she stood again and faced the creature warily.

Then a
shot rang out, and the cat screamed- a primal, rasping sound- before it slumped
forward onto the grass.

Ashlyn
stared, unbelieving, as her teeth began to chatter from the cold.

One
bullet? One
bullet
had killed it?

Drake
walked up to Ashlyn quickly, sliding his fingers around the wrist of the hand
that clutched the sword. "I believe that the cats are the weakest of our
adversaries," he said, reading her mind as usual. He swiftly pulled the
fully-charged
heal
stane out of her
sword and swapped it with the drained
heal
in his revolver. "I've seen only two of them. The bears are much more
powerful." He narrowed his eyes, casting the magic without so much as a
tremor in his fingers, which were still clasped around Ashlyn's wrist.

She
remembered that he'd been skilled with
heal
magic, more so even than Aaron. Right now he seemed so calm and collected.
Strange, that they were surrounded by death, flames and carnage, but Drake was
like a lighthouse in the midst of the storm- unmoved.

She
shivered fiercely, wondered how he knew about the
shift
magic. "H-h-how did you-"

"Skye."
He didn't even let her finish before he traded the glowing green orbs back
again and dropped her wrist. "You're covered in mud. We'll have to open it
up again after the battle."

Ashlyn
looked at her shoulder, wrinkling her nose at the thought that he had healed
new skin over the icky bits of grass and leaves. But the double-ring of bite
marks was only scabbed over, not fully healed, and even though the dozens of
red-rimmed puncture wounds still hurt like hell, she figured that she could
probably fight just as well now that they weren't bleeding.

Something
struck her from behind suddenly, and Ashlyn stumbled forward, grunting (rather
unattractively) as she felt something warm sluice down the back of her neck.

"
Crap,"
she said, realizing that the something warm was her own
blood.

Drake
turned, his face expressionless.

"I
can't catch a break," Ashlyn said stupidly, and fell to her knees.

As much
as she tried to stay awake, the weightlessness was overpowering. In seconds she
was gone, spiraling into infinity like a dying star, and with the loss of
consciousness came an image of her father, standing before her in his
ceremonial kimono, an expression of disappointment on his tanned face.

I
knew you couldn't do it, Ashlyn,
he said,
and his voice was like Kou's, gentle and effortless.
I knew you'd never make
a leader.

Great.
Even in her dreams he was the same stupid jerk.

Yeah,
let me out of your little mind trap and I'll show you how much of a leader I
can be,
she thought furiously at him.

What
was it that was supposed to wake you up?

She
took a breath- nothing.

She
blinked.

Well,
she hadn't
really
expected that to work.

She
jumped up and down, screaming at the top of her lungs, but it was as though she
were moving through sludge, and her scream echoed like no more than a stage
whisper, bouncing off her imaginary walls like one of the ping pong balls in
the arcade at Silverbell Theme Park.

Her
father simply stared at her, unmoving, a rock, a steel wall that she could beat
her fists against and never find a weakness. It was the way she remembered him
before her mother had died, before Lord Angelo had stolen everything from her,
before she'd left Toryn. Before everything.

Suddenly
he moved, grasping her arm in a vice-like grip that sent shards of pain up into
her shoulder. Ashlyn yelped. "Let
go
of me, you stupid-"

"Save
me," he said, and his voice was no longer Kou's, no longer smooth and
sweet. It was the same ragged tone of the man she remembered from three years
ago. Ashlyn stared into his eyes, as dark as her own, and her breath was gone
in a moment.

"Dad?"
she said, uncertainly. She hadn’t called him that since she was a little girl.

"Save
me,"
he repeated, his gaze piercing
her straight through her soul.

His
face suddenly went up in flames, scalding her eyes. Ashlyn yanked back-

-And
woke up, tears tickling her temples.

She sat
up slowly, her entire head aching.

Smoke
drifted skyward in thin wisps from the pagoda. It was so dark that Ashlyn could
still see the smoldering beams inside the holy temple, the flames that didn't
quite want to be put out. The path to the pagoda and the bell tower was clear
of soldiers, clear even of the beasts who had attacked.

"Is
it over?" she said softly, hardly daring to believe that she'd missed so
much.

"It
never began," Drake said from beside her. She looked up and saw him
standing over her, to the north- sheltering her from the worst of the drizzle.

"What
do you mean?" she muttered, groaning as she climbed to her feet. Her hand
came away from the back of her head sticky, but it was old blood.

"If
that was their army, then we have been sadly misled," the gunslinger told
her, making no move to help her stand. "That was barely a scouting party,
much less a full-blown attack on the city."

"Well,
they beat me up pretty good," Ashlyn said wryly. She felt like she'd been
through half a dozen battles. "It felt like they were after me and no one
else."

Drake
stared at the pagoda, a muscle in his jaw working. "They attacked no one
unprovoked- except for you," he said finally. "You may be
right."

He
turned and, without hesitation, removed his coat, shrugging it from his
shoulders and swinging it around onto hers. He kept his hands at her
collarbone, releasing the coat only when Ashlyn reached up to touch his hand.

"Your
cousin is in your father's home," he intoned. "Aaron was forced to
leave him when the attack began. The healer has done her best, but it may be
too late to treat the worst of his wounds."

Drake's
words sank in slowly, as emotionless as the snapping of dry wood, and Ashlyn nodded.
"Thank you," she said, and pushed past him, making her way towards
Lord Li's house.

The
house was dark, darker even than outside, but it didn't take long for her to
find her way to her father's room. She could have walked the path with her eyes
closed.

A
single candle was lit on the floor beside the mat where Soryl lay. Ashlyn took
a step towards him, breathing his name, wondering if he could hear her.

His
face was turned away from her, but she could still see the burns that nearly
obscured his youthful features, changing the boy she'd once called friend to a
scarred stranger, silent and pitiful in his faceless anonymity.

Ashlyn
took another step and knelt beside him, gathering the coat around her shoulders
and noting that he'd thrown off the thin sheet that they had covered him with,
perhaps aggravated by the feel of it against his damaged skin.

"Soryl,"
she said again.

Slowly
he turned his head to face her, and Ashlyn swallowed. The whites of his eyes
were the color of thorn-sours, bright yellow against the charred red and black
of his damaged skin. His dry, cracked lips twitched once, then again, and the
strangled sound that came out could have been her name.

"You'll
be all right," Ashlyn said awkwardly. She reached for his fingers, then
thought better of it and clasped her hands tightly in front of her. What to
say? This was a boy she'd known since infancy, the orphan son of her mother’s
sister, and she’d never felt tongue-tied in front of him. But at the moment she
couldn't think of a single thing that sounded right. It had been three years,
and it might have been a hundred for as well as she knew Soryl now.

She
swallowed hard. "I…I know that the
shift
magic can't be used by anyone except for, um, Li heirs. I don't- I don't
need an explanation, I understand how difficult it must be for you, too."
Ashlyn tapped her foot on the floor nervously, thinking of the sign of Li that
she'd scrubbed off in her fit of rage. How strange to think that Soryl should
have been tattooed with one at birth, and yet his identity had been kept a
complete secret.

"So
I guess that makes us siblings, and not just cousins," she said absently,
staring at her hands. "I don't know if you knew about this before I left,
but if you did…I'm sorry."

I'm sorry I didn't know,
she wanted to tell him.
I’m sorry my father didn’t let me see you after my mother died. I’m
sorry I wasn’t there for you when you were struggling with this.

"I
don't know why you're fighting against Devlyn," Ashlyn continued shakily.
"I don't even know if I believe everything he's told me, I mean, he hasn't
exactly been forthcoming about…all the details. But I do know that this war is
senseless. Toryn is only as strong as its inner circle- world domination has
absolutely nothing to do with power, and it certainly has nothing to do with
peace, which is what our elders sought for so long. It's what our entire
culture was based on- the premise of harmony with nature and amongst
ourselves."

She
paused, knowing that she was lecturing but still wanting to say more. Her gaze
drifted from Soryl's face to his neck, continuing down his chest, which was so
horridly burnt that she had to blink, unable to believe he was still alive
after being so badly injured.

The
inside of his right arm, around the crook of his elbow, was almost normal, if
only slightly blackened by the lightning spell. Ashlyn frowned and leaned over
him, noting the presence of several tiny…scars?…scabs?…surrounded by spider
veins and bruising. The veins traced their way ominously up his arm, fading
into the charred blackness of his skin. She tried to remember if, during their
short battle, she'd dealt any blows to his arm. Probably- it was difficult to
recall- but those veins didn't look like any bruise she'd ever seen before. It
looked more like poison, or an infection.

She
bumped his side as she pulled back, and looked quickly at his face to see if
she'd hurt him. Soryl's eyes were glassy, staring up at the ceiling rafters as
though he were memorizing every detail of their thin, uncomplicated design.

"There's
so much I want to tell you," she said softly, leaning forward and reaching
out a hand. She did not touch him, letting her palm hover an inch away from his
forehead, wanting so badly to feel the comfort of contact but knowing that it
would only bring him pain.

She
cleared her throat, smiling through her tears. "I missed you, you
know," she murmured. "As much as anyone, if not more. I would see
things that reminded me of you and think,
I
wish Soryl were here
, and then I'd have to kick myself because you were so
gosh-darn
annoying
all the time, thinking you were some big hoity-toity
god of martial arts or something just because our sensei liked you
better." She sniffled. "I could have been his favorite, you know. If
I'd studied harder or tried even the littlest bit to get into his good graces.
But I was just so…so…" Her voice trailed off as she realized that Soryl
hadn't blinked since she'd been staring at him.

In
fact, she couldn't remember any kind of movement since he'd spoken her name.

No.

No!

"When
you get better," she continued doggedly, "we'll have to have a
rematch, see if that butt-kicking I gave you when we were kids was a one-time
thing or not. You always said that my incessant jabbering was what distracted
you enough for me to beat you."

There
were footsteps behind her. A hand slid onto her injured shoulder, gently, but
Ashlyn ignored it, knowing why they had come.

"And
when you get better you can come to Silverbell with me,” she said stubbornly.
“I’ve been there so many times, and we always said when we were kids that we’d
go together someday. It’s such a blast. We’ll bet on horse-racing and hit up
the arcade.”