The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (59 page)

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 likes 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 get 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.

Regardless, I had no choice, and I reluctantly
handed G a change of clothes, noticing with some relief that her lower lip was
no longer trembling and she had wiped away the tears from her eyes. “I will
turn around,” I said when she took the clothing from me. It probably would have
been more gentlemanly to step outside, but I was in no hurry to experience the
icy cold again.

I moved to the front of the cargo bay, just behind
the cockpit, and braced my hands against the seats. Chief Redhorse had said
nothing about the kiss. I could only hope that he would be half as
understanding regarding this new development.