I was quiet for a moment before I met Chief Redhorse’s solemn gaze. “Sir, are you asking me to enter the Caverns and cast the spell myself?”
Redhorse inclined his head slightly. “Only an Angel can successfully activate the magic without being trapped. Unfortunately it has been many years since an Angel has entered Cosmea, and as the stane in the Caverns grows weaker, I fear that no Angel will come. I would ask that you journey to the Heavenly City and find an Angel willing to assist us.” He paused briefly, then continued with a fleeting smile, “I am also asking you to accompany me, and a few of my warriors, into the Caverns. The skills of a Toryn ninja would be most helpful in the event that something goes wrong. If you agree to my request, I would be most willing to forge an alliance with Toryn.”
It was akin to blackmail, but without a hint of malice. I wondered at the twist of emotions inside me. I was not afraid to do what he was asking, but there was a yearning in my heart that I did not quite understand. I glanced at G again, but she had averted her eyes and was staring at the floor, waiting for my answer.
“I would be honored to stand by your side, Chief Redhorse,” I said. It was a very curious situation, being so infatuated with a girl I had only just met. “I can leave for the Heavenly City tomorrow, if that is your wish.”
Afterwards, G walked me back to the inn. She was mostly silent, but when we reached the door to the tavern, she stopped and put a hand on my arm.
“You don’t have to do it, you know,” she said.
Her touch was electric, and I made a conscious effort to appear nonchalant as I met her gaze steadily. “Do what?”
“Find an Angel. Help him cast the magic of the stane. He only wants you to because you’re Toryn, and if the Angel does not succeed, Toryns are usually so much…better with magic. Cosmeans aren’t experienced in the use of stanes. We prefer natural methods.”
Ah. That explained the chief’s eagerness to recruit me.
“If Cosmeans are less experienced with magic than I, it would be both foolish and selfish if I were to turn my back on your father now,” I responded. “He needs my help. I hope he would do the same for Toryn, if the opportunity presented itself.”
“But…” She trailed off, looking frustrated. “Sometimes people die in the Caverns. No one died the last time they restrained the evil, but the time before that someone did, and the time before that…”
I put my hand over hers, pressing her fingers against my arm. I was strangely moved by her concern for my well-being. “My reasoning stands.”
She shook her head wordlessly, looking up at me with those wide russet eyes, and suddenly my heart was pounding loudly in my ears. Without thinking, I leaned down and, cupping my hand against the back of her neck, pressed my lips to hers.
It was as brief as any kiss could be and still be called a kiss, but in the few moments that it lasted, she responded, her hands sliding up against my chest and leaving my skin heated everywhere she touched.
When I pulled back, ready to apologize, she smiled at me, looking quite shy and not at all upset. Then she turned and left, and I retreated to my room, where I am sitting now, writing frantically in this journal as though my life depends on the act of recording what quickly turned out to be the best day of my existence thus far.
***
IT HAS BEEN TWO DAYS SINCE I HAVE WRITTEN.
I am perhaps the first Toryn to have reached the Heavenly City, to have looked upon its glorious spires and witnessed the perfection of the dwelling place of the Angels.
I have heard stories from Toryns who have encountered Angels in their travels, but had never met one myself until this morning.
After G left me at the inn in Cosmea, I could hardly sleep. Writing helped, but not much. I lay awake in my bed until daybreak, pleasantly haunted by the memory of her lips against mine. It was not my first kiss, but it was the first one to have affected me so. Was it her first? I have not the courage to ask.
Upon repacking my belongings and leaving the inn, I encountered Chief Redhorse, who was accompanied by G and a female wolf.
“Good morning, Chief,” I said, bowing low. I had never met a wolf before, and hesitated after greeting the chief, unsure of how to proceed. I was saved from my own awkwardness when the wolf stepped forward and surprisingly greeted me in the traditional Toryn style.
“I am Delail. I welcome you, young ninja,” she said, and her tone was warm, the words flowing off her tongue like silk.
“I thank you for your welcome, elder,” I said, bowing again, and introduced myself with my name and clan, noting with a pang that very soon I would be forfeiting my first name and become known only as “Lord Li.”
She did not repeat my name, which I vaguely recalled was a Cosmean tradition- refraining from using others’ names unless necessary. “I trust you bear no wounds from your journey?”
“None, elder. And you?”
She smiled, and the welcoming gesture was only slightly marred by her lethally sharp teeth. “I am well, and was glad to learn of your presence here. It has been many years since I have seen a Toryn, though I spent a good deal of time on your island in my youth. I will be traveling with you to the Heavenly City. I have a friend there who may help us.”
A wolf, friends with an Angel? Having no idea how I was to persuade an Angel to leave the Heavenly City and travel to Cosmea to undertake a potentially life-threatening mission, I felt a vast sense of relief that Delail might be able to offer help.
“I will be traveling with you as well,” G spoke up from beside her father. “This may be my only chance to see the Heavenly City. I wouldn’t want to miss it.”
I nodded, making a monumental effort not to show any sign of excitement at the news. “I planned to leave immediately.”
“I have a small airship that I will leave at your disposal,” Chief Redhorse said, motioning to something behind me. “My daughter is a skilled pilot and should be able to get you to the Heavenly City by nightfall.”
I turned to look, seeing the front end of what appeared to be a very small airship poking out from behind the edge of a cliff. It should not have surprised me, because most cities are far more advanced than Toryn in terms of transportation and mechanical workings, but it did. I had never been on an airship before, and wondered uneasily if my motion sickness would translate to air sickness as well.
As it turned out, I am not a good traveler by air, any more than I am a good traveler by sea. I can only hope that motion sickness is not hereditary, or I certainly pity any future Li descendants who also suffer from wanderlust. Traveling will not be easy.
G, of course, found my sickly green appearance uproariously funny, and made no secret of her amusement during the flight. I should have been offended or at the very least, more embarrassed than I was, but somehow there was nothing else in Kresmir I would rather have been doing than sitting beside her in the cockpit, trying to maintain some modicum of dignity while clutching a bucket in my lap.
Delail slept through much of the flight, which G told me was customary for wolves. I was secretly grateful for this, because it gave me a chance to speak privately with G after my stomach had calmed somewhat.
“Do you want to be Lord of Toryn?” she asked me candidly, after we had made mundane conversation about landmarks and weather.
The question surprised me, and I had to pause for a moment to collect my thoughts. “No,” I said. “But my father says it is my birthright. My destiny. I owe it to my people.”
“Your father must be very different from mine,” she remarked, fiddling with a dial on the cockpit control panel.
“There are some similarities,” I said, because although I did not know Chief Redhorse well, I had already ascertained that he was a wise and capable leader of his people. “Does your father expect you to become Chief of Cosmea after he is gone?”
“He hopes, I think,” G said, and smiled at me. “Mostly he just wants me to be happy. That’s why he let me come with you to the Heavenly City, you know. He l
ikes you.”
“He doesn’t even know me,” I spluttered, trying to cover how pleased I was to hear it.
“Yes, but he trusts his instincts, and his instincts say you are an honorable man.” She slanted a sly, sideways glance at me. “He knows you kissed me last night.”
“You told him?” I said, and my voice was embarrassingly shrill. Oh, Drago. I had faced the man only this morning and he knew I had kissed his only daughter within hours of meeting her.
“I didn’t tell him, he just knew. He’s like that- he knows things. I don’t have to tell him.”
“He is going to kill me,” I muttered. “The Elder Heir certainly is no diplomat.”
“He knew that too,” she said pointedly. “That’s why he likes you. Why did you come anyway? Why didn’t your father send a real ambassador?”
I debated briefly about lying to her, making up some excuse as to my presence in Cosmea, but if she was anything like her father, she would see right through it. “My father thinks this is a compromise for both of us. I told him I had no desire to be Lord of Toryn, and when he asked for a reason, I said that I had seen nothing outside of Toryn. He sent me here so that I could fulfill my dream of traveling the world before I am…forced to ascend the pagoda.” I had almost said forced to marry, but caught myself. I did not want G to know about Susyn, at least not yet.
“That’s not the only reason you don’t want to ascend,” she said, and I nodded. She had her father’s intuition after all.
“I do not see myself as a leader.”
“Perhaps you just need to grow into the role.”
“Or perhaps I would be better suited to a different role.”
“Such as…?”
I found myself embarrassed again. This conversation was far too personal for my liking. “Writing,” I said at some length. “Toryn has not had an established historian for many years. I fear that generations are being forgotten because of a lack of respect for our history and those who have come before us.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad to me,” she said, grinning. “It’s not like you’re running from Toryn, you just don’t want to be a leader. Have you told your father that?”
“Told him…?”
“That you want to be the Toryn historian.”
“Of course not.” My father would laugh in my face. He had never approved of my writing. Journaling is for women, he always said. I don’t know why I let your mother get you hooked on doodling in those books every day. It’s abnormal for a young man of your caliber.
“You could still be a historian if you were Lord of Toryn,” she pointed out. “It wouldn’t be all that bad.”
“Do you want to be Chief of Cosmea?” I asked, desperately hoping to change the focus of the conversation to someone other than myself.
G frowned, staring out the window of the cockpit, and my throat tightened uncomfortably. I looked down at the disgusting bucket in my lap, struck suddenly with the ridiculousness of my situation. The graceful curve of her neck, the precise symmetry of her softly pretty features, it was all very difficult not to notice, but I was in no position to become romantically entangled with this woman.
“My father will live forever,” she said, and there was a solemn lilt to her tone that belied her confident words. “There’s no need for me to make a decision just yet.”
For a man of, shall we say, advanced age, Chief Redhorse did seem unusually healthy. That was not the case with my father, who had been battling a lung illness for the better part of a decade.
“Would you ever…leave Cosmea?” I asked, my inquiry apparently stemming from a desire to flay my poor infatuated heart to the point of total devastation.
She glanced at me, and I could tell from the sardonic curve to her mouth that she knew exactly what I was thinking. “Maybe,” she said. “There’s no need for me to make a decision just yet.”
The ease with which we converse still surprises me, a day after we spent hours together on the airship, simply getting to know one another. But perhaps I am dwelling too much on the minute details rather than writing about what happened after we reached the northern continent. It was quite dark when we arrived, but the spires of the Heavenly City were lit with an unearthly glow, lighting our descent.
I knew the moment I stepped off the airship that I had dressed inappropriately. Never having journeyed to the northern continent before, I was ill-prepared for the blast of icy cold wind that enveloped me. For all the protection that my thin tunic offered me, I might as well have been standing there naked.
Three Angels appeared at the gates to the Heavenly City even before I had taken a step, and their ethereal beauty was truly breathtaking. I bowed low as Delail moved forward, and I was immediately glad of the wolf’s presence in our small party. As I had been reminded several times since my arrival in Cosmea, my diplomatic skills were sadly lacking.
“Greetings, elders,” Delail said in her low, pleasing voice. “I am Delail.”
“We know who you are, wolf,” one of the Angels, a tall, slender man with piercing blue eyes and dark hair, said. His tone was dismissive, but the sound of his voice was smooth and musical, each word dancing through the air like a lyric to a song. I was too fascinated to hide my curiosity, staring openly at the Angel and his two companions.
“Why have you come?” a second Angel asked. She too had blue eyes, but her long, wavy hair was the color of sand, so light it appeared almost translucent.
“Begging your pardon, Lucius- but the Spirit of the Caverns will soon awaken,” Delail said, addressing the man. “We have the stane, but only those who walk outside of time may wield the Stane of Nine Thousand.”
“We have subdued the Spirit of the Caverns for many centuries,” Lucius answered, eyes narrowing as he stared at Delail. “Is it not time for humankind to assume this responsibility?”
Delail hesitated, clearly taken aback by his response. “I believe humans- or even wolves- would gladly do so, if it became necessary,” she said at last. “But we had hoped that the Angels might help us avoid such a sacrifice.”
“We have our own dangers to concern ourselves with,” the second Angel answered testily. “Have you not heard of the uprising on the eastern continent? Lord Angelo seeks to change our way of life.”
Delail said nothing, and I very nearly stepped forward at that point, ready to introduce myself and attempt to explain the gravity of the situation, but the third Angel, who had been standing quietly beside Lucius the entire time, caught my eye and shook her head, indicating that I should keep still.
After a long pause Lucius sighed, and glanced at the second Angel. “Lord Angelo will be dealt with in due time,” he said. “Wolf, you may enter and we will discuss what can be done about the Spirit. Your companions may remain here.”
The third Angel offered me a shadow of a smile as she turned to follow Lucius, and I nodded back, wondering who she was. She was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, with fine, delicate features, straight brown hair falling to her shoulders, and blue eyes in the same icy shade that appeared to be shared by all Angels.
Delail did not acknowledge us as she followed the Angels inside, and G and I stood there dumbly for several long moments after the gates closed behind her.
“What do we do now?” G asked finally.
“We wait, I suppose.” There was nothing else we could do.
G turned towards me, and I saw for the first time that her russet eyes were filled with tears. “I didn’t expect it to be like this,” she said. “I thought they’d welcome us.”
“They are…distracted. Lucius said there was an uprising on the eastern continent.” He had also mentioned the name Lord Angelo, which I had never heard before. Most leaders in the Free Lands did not call themselves lords.
Another gust of wind brought with it a smattering of snowflakes, and I looked up at the darkened sky, illuminated only by the glow of the Heavenly City, and noted that storm clouds were moving in quickly. “We should g
et inside,” I said, and reached out to take G’s hand.
It felt strange to be going back into the airship when we had only just departed, stranger still that we might be spending the night in such cramped quarters when the Angels presumably had suitable guest accommodations within the city gates. The stories I have heard of the Angels always mention their gracious natures. I wondered if this Lord Angelo was the sole cause of their frustrations.
I helped G inside and pulled up the small ramp behind me, sealing it against the swirling snow outside. When I turned, she was standing forlornly behind me, shivering but making no move to warm herself.
“Are you all right?” I asked, touching her shoulder and noting that it was wet with melting snow.
She turned to me, her lower lip trembling. “What if they won’t help?” she asked. “What if they decide we really are on our own? Humans can’t cast the magic without dying. My father- oh gods, if he finds out they’ve refused us, he’ll insist on using the stane himself.”
“That is not going to happen,” I said firmly. “I would not allow it.”
“I don’t want you to die either!” she exclaimed, and the way she waved her arms in the air for dramatic emphasis was almost comical. “I don’t want anyone to die! No one should have to!”
“If they intended to refuse us, they certainly would not have invited Delail in,” I said, rummaging through my knapsack for a fire stane. I would not be able to light a fire inside the airship, but the stane itself could be used to provide heat. “Do not concern yourself. She will be back very soon, and I am certain that the Angels will accompany us to Cosmea.”
After I had placed the fire stane into a shallow stone bowl that I carried in my knapsack for such purposes, and activated the magic so that the stane began to glow red and warm the tiny cargo hold of the airship, G had still not moved.
“Get close to the stane,” I instructed, placing a hand on her back and gently pushing her towards our makeshift warming device. She moved at my urging, and I set about unpacking her sleeping roll and some dry clothing for her. I laid out her bed roll on one side of the hold and arranged mine as close to the opposite wall as I could, trying not to think of how incredibly inappropriate it would be for the Elder Heir to sleep in the same room with an unmarried female. A nagging thought at the back of my mind that I had already crossed the lines of propriety by kissing G the night before, but I ignored it. An innocent kiss in a public place was quite different from sleeping in the same cramped cargo hold with no one along to chaperone.
The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) Page 41
