The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (35 page)

A sudden eruption of hisses and
growls came from her left- and Ashlyn realized that they had the
shift
magic, or at least one of them
did. She had barely turned to face the beast before it was on her, biting and
roaring. It was one of the cats, the weakest of the
shift
monsters, but that didn’t make it any less deadly. Its jaws
clamped down on Ashlyn’s right arm, and she yelped in pain.

 
There was no time to react- she gasped out a
few words, and fire roiled around the big cat, singeing Ashlyn’s arms as she
punched the beast, finally managing to knock it off with an elbow to the eye.
Ashlyn scrambled wildly to her feet, clutching at her bleeding arm, her injured
shoulder aching.

There were two cats; the one
she’d hit was shaking its head as it extricated itself from the pile of leaves
where it had landed. Ashlyn glanced to her left, at the closest cat. She’d have
to make this quick.

Shouting her spell, she threw out
her hand, and used the
fire
stane
once more, flames exploding from the ground and consuming the poor animal. The
cat screamed, but Ashlyn didn’t have time to see what happened next- she was
already off and running. She ran by the burning beast, but had barely cleared
the fire before she was knocked to the ground by the second cat. The shuriken
flew out of her hands and slid across the leaf-strewn ground, the light from
the stane extinguished the moment it left her grip.

Ashlyn quickly rolled before the
animal could get a chance to pin her down, but the cat’s claws dug into her
shoulders and it rolled with her. Ashlyn landed on her belly again, and threw
her head back, connecting with the creature’s face and momentarily stunning
them both with the impact. Stars sparked before Ashlyn’s eyes.
Panthers have hard heads,
she thought
stupidly.
Who knew?
Gasping with the
pain of the claws on her shoulders, she tried to remember which stanes she had
in her armlet. Which one could she use to get out of this? All that she had
were
heal
…and
shift.

She twisted, trying to elbow the
creature behind her, but the cat snarled and momentarily let go of her shoulder
to take another swipe, gashing Ashlyn’s upper arm with its claws.

She knew then that she didn’t
have any other choice.

Writhing and twisting, trying to
at least make it difficult for the beast to get a death grip, Ashlyn cried out
for help, the
shift
stane in her
mind’s eye, desperately hoping that it would assist her in her time of need.

The change was immediate.

There was none of the agony that
she had seen in Tag’s transformation, none of the gruesome rearranging of bones
and shifting of tendons. Ashlyn had no reason to scream because there was no
pain. It was instantaneous. One moment, she was in her human form, pinned to
the ground and completely helpless against her attacker, and the next moment, a
sense of clarity settled over her as she shifted into a panther. Every sense
was heightened, her body humming with energy and anger. Ashlyn twisted and
lunged upwards, sinking her claws into the other cat’s neck and dragging the
creature beneath her own body. She ripped and tore at her adversary, tasting
blood but too furious to stop.

At last the big cat lay still
beneath her, and it was only then that Ashlyn took a breath, the air feeling
strangely pungent in her lungs. She backed off the other cat, slowly, adjusting
to the fluid movements of her own limbs. After a moment, she realized that the
darkness was no longer darkness. As a cat, she could see in the dark. She
wondered briefly what daylight looked like through these cat eyes.

Hesitantly, she tried to form
words, something to stop the magic, but all that came out were a few growling
noises. It worked despite its simplicity, and in another heartbeat Ashlyn was
herself again, sore and bleeding- and
naked
-
but alive.

She propped herself up gingerly
against a tree trunk, shivering, murmuring the words to mend her wounds as the
heal
stane glowed sweetly in her armlet.

She allowed herself a moment to
contemplate what had just taken place. She had taken on the shape of a panther,
but the soldier she’d taken this particular
shift
stane from had been a bear. Was it possible that each person shape-shifted
into a different animal? Or could you control the animal you shape-shifted into
once you were more experienced with the magic?

Also, by no means did she feel
like a master of the magic, but Kou had previously told her that the
shift
magic was dangerously addictive.
Yet she felt no different. There was no pull from the
shift
stane. There was no lingering pain from the shape-shift, which
had certainly been almost anticlimactic in comparison to Tag’s awful and
agonizing transformation that she had witnessed in the basement of her home.

Perhaps the unnaturalness of his
shape-shift was because he did not truly belong to the Li bloodline? Perhaps
true Li heirs were able to transform without the pain?

She wasn’t sure, and she didn’t
really want to find out.

With some effort, Ashlyn managed
to pull herself upright, and made her way towards where her shuriken was lying
on the ground. She eyed the fallen ninja closest to her, wondering if his
clothes would fit her.

The first strains of dawn were
filtering through the trees.

If FLD hadn’t already discovered
that she was gone, they would soon.

Chapter 2

Like a Wild
Animal

The tents were a dull gray, not
so dark as the gray that Toryn ninjas wore, but bland enough to fade into
almost any landscape. In the wintry forest they blended in quite well, so well,
in fact, that Ashlyn had almost missed them at first.

On the southern half of the
island, which was at a higher elevation than the city, the first snowfall had
already occurred, though most of it had melted in the first few hours of
morning. Ashlyn shivered at the frost seeping through her clothes as she inched
forward on her belly, trying to get a better glimpse of the encampment from her
position on the edge of the cliff above.

It wasn’t a large army, by any
means- Ashlyn had counted eighty-nine soldiers so far, though she couldn’t be
sure how many were still in the tents and the caves.

The location was fairly secure,
flanked on three sides by jagged, ominous cliffs that jutted up above the
trees. The only way in was to approach from the east, coming out of the forest,
but the bare trees would provide very little cover for an army. Ashlyn was
suddenly glad that she hadn’t attempted an attack on her father’s soldiers. The
inexperienced Toryn army would not have fared well in a situation such as this
one.

Ashlyn herself had approached
from the north, scaling the cliffs with little difficulty and dispatching the
scout she found at the top, along with the one who had just climbed up for a
relief shift a few moments ago.

After spending a short time
observing the encampment, she had to admit that finding her father was going to
be more difficult than she’d expected. Initially she had thought that the
chosen location was pretty stupid. All she needed were a few dozen good
archers, and they could easily take out the army from the high ground. But then
she realized that the cliff itself contained a cave, and although there was no
way to be sure of the size of the cave from this vantage point, she had seen
most of the soldiers disappear into and then reappear from its craggy opening
in the last few minutes. There was just no telling how many more troops were
already inside.

She edged backwards, away from
the cliff’s edge and out of sight of the soldiers below, and sat up, chewing
her lower lip contemplatively. There was no way that one ninja, even a ninja as
utterly bad-ass as she was, could possibly fight past eighty-nine soldiers.

She looked down at her outfit,
the traditional gray wool gi belted with dark green leather and soft-soled
black boots. Her green mask was emblazoned with the mark of Toryn- the same as
the soldiers milling around below her.

What if she could
walk
in? Just stroll right into the cave
like she belonged there? She looked as much like a soldier in her father’s army
as any other person in the encampment.

It seemed like a really stupid
and ridiculously simple plan.

But maybe they wouldn’t be
expecting it.

Still…

Ashlyn looked up, noting the
sun’s position in the sky. It was late morning now, and she had wasted precious
minutes watching the camp. Skye would have discovered her absence shortly after
sunrise, and if she knew anything about the blond swordsman, he was already on
his way, probably on horseback. It wouldn’t take him nearly as long to get here
as it had taken her.

Decision made. Ashlyn crawled to
the backside of the cliff and carefully switched knapsacks with the first scout
she’d slain, transferring her belongings and her shuriken into his far more
distinctive-looking blue knapsack and using her gray bag to fashion a new
harness to strap her sword onto her back.With any luck and with her mask on,
the other soldiers would assume she was the scout who had just been relieved.

Gritting her teeth, she skittered
down the side of the mountain, grabbing hold where she could, and sliding
haphazardly where she couldn’t. She jumped the last fifteen feet, tumbling
indelicately into a pile of dead foliage in an extremely un-ninja-like manner.
Whoops.

Brushing leaves off her clothes,
Ashlyn straightened her mask and tucked several errant strands of hair back
into her hood. Okay. No big deal. Get in, get to her father, get out. The
getting out part would be more difficult if her father didn’t cooperate, but if
it came down to that…well, she just had to remember the old proverb about
cutting off the head of the snake. Without her father, there would be no army,
and she was next in line for leadership.

She felt considerably more
confident than she had a few hours ago, but was still unsure about the prospect
of challenging her dad to a Leadership Duel.

Unfortunately, she was out of
time to deliberate over it. Now or never. Do or die.

Ashlyn jogged along the base of
the cliff, keeping under the overhanging ledge in an attempt to stay as
inconspicuous as possible. When she reached the outcropping of rock at the
entrance, she slowed down, forcing herself to walk casually. She could feel her
heartbeat in her throat, pulsing fiercely against her tongue, as she took her
first step into the encampment.

No one even gave her a second
glance, which was almost hilariously anticlimactic after all the different
scenarios she’d conjured up in her mind. Ashlyn made a beeline for the cave
entrance, then deliberately slowed, trying not to look too eager. A soldier
nodded to her as he walked past, and she returned the gesture. He didn’t seem
to notice anything, and kept walking.

Ashlyn glanced up casually,
surveying the cliff face. It was very steep on the inner walls, unlike the
backside of the mountain, which was slanted enough that she could climb up and
down without too much trouble. Although an attack would have been possible with
archers at the top of the mountain, there would have been no way for them to
get down afterwards without going around the long way. This was an ideal
location for an encampment. The only downside that Ashlyn could see was the
extreme cold that plagued the southern half of the island in the winter- but of
course when the war started, it would have been summertime. Presumably when
they’d set up camp here, they hadn’t expected the war to last this long. Ashlyn
suppressed a smile. It appeared as though Kou and her father had underestimated
Jackson and the rest of FLD, just as her father was underestimating her now.

She was struck by the total
silence around her as she wove her way between the tents. In any ordinary camp,
even a military camp, there would be snippets of conversation, and she’d been
hoping that everyone would be chit-chatting so she could attempt to pick out
their dialects and figure out where most of these soldiers were from. But there
was no chatting. No conversation, no joking or laughing or even crying. Just a
whole lot of nothing, unspoken whispers ringing in her ears with the gentle
pad-pad-pad
of her own footsteps.

It was, in a word, unnerving.

But she reached the cave entrance
without ado, and if they were a bunch of strong, silent types, Ashlyn wasn’t
about to fault them for that, just as long as they stayed strong and silent
long enough to let her get to Lord Li.

Her eyes took a moment to adjust
when she stepped inside, and the first thing she noticed was a torch mounted on
the wall opposite her, burning ambitiously but not quite succeeding in chasing
away the shadows around it.

The entrance opened into a large
cavern, with stalactites hanging down from the ceiling like an angry threat,
dripping water on the stone floor. Although the outer edges of the room had dry
ground, the floor’s center was swallowed in a large, shallow puddle.

There weren’t many soldiers
inside- just four, clustered off to one side and sharpening their weapons.
Ashlyn noted with some irritation that one of them was holding an oversized bo
shuriken, much like the one she’d lost several years ago. It wasn’t the same
one- his was made of some burnished orange metal- but it irked Ashlyn to see
anyone using a single large bo shuriken when she had been the one to engineer
the technique as a pre-teen. Most ninjas carried several small bo shuriken in
place of the small hira throwing stars, but Ashlyn had come up with the idea to
forge a larger bo shuriken and use it as both a stabbing and throwing weapon.