“The scarred demon said it had been following me. Summoning it may be as easy as approaching another earth-current.” No current ran beneath the sand here. The canyon felt dead of both magic and life, apart from the occasional skittering spider or patch of lichen.
“These other demons, the ssarez-kai, must lie in wait for you as well.” Teo’s eyes were fixed on Kiran, weighing, judging.
“I know the danger,” Kiran said. “Before I go anywhere near an earth-current, I’ll seek more knowledge from my memories of the veiled temple. The adults there must have known how to summon demons. Maybe even how to defend against them.” Although the sour man had said to the bone mage about him and the other children, If they can’t claim kinship, we’ll have no protection.
Teo said, “I saw the wall in your mind. I’ve never seen a block so strong. Do you really think you can glimpse enough of your memories to find anything of use?”
“I was hoping you might help me with that. There must be a flaw in the block, or I wouldn’t be seeing memories at all. With your knowledge of healing, if you were to examine my mind more deeply, you could find the flaw and help me open it further.”
“No,” Teo said sharply. “I have skirted close enough to breaking my vow already. If you wish to take more hadaf, or some stronger herb, I’ll give you that. But I will not enter your mind again.”
Kiran couldn’t bite back his frustration. “You keep acting like magic is poison, but you know spells can be used for good purpose. You even use charms yourself. Why did you vow never to cast?”
Silence stretched, thick and fraught. Kiran sighed, thinking he’d driven Teo back behind the bristling wall of his grief and pain. But as they climbed over a drifted heap of pebbles that rolled treacherously underfoot, Teo spoke.
“On the island of my birth, magic is thought to be a gift of the three-fold goddess. Mage-born children are consecrated to serve one of her aspects according to their talent. Those with the strength to fuel spells from wind join the temple of Yekaia mist-maiden, to learn the weather-magic that keeps crops flourishing and storms from destroying our harbors. Those capable of drawing power from waves go to the temple of Hatani ocean-mother, to learn the sea-magic that keeps boats strong and nets full. Those who can only draw from their own soul’s flame are sent to the adepts of Nakoali soul-eater. They become the hands of her judgment, dispensing healing or punishment as the goddess’s chosen Voice dictates.”
Kiran listened, his curiosity burgeoning. How did one draw power from wind or water? He hadn’t the least idea, but then, he’d never even seen the sea. “You were an adept of Nakoali, I gather.”
“Yes,” Teo said. “My family was so proud. Mage-talent is so rare that it had been generations since the goddess last touched a child in our town. I was proud too, if perhaps a trifle disappointed that I hadn’t been granted a bright enough soul to serve Yekaia or Hatani. But when I came of age I went to serve Nakoali’s Voice with a glad heart.”
“So this Voice is a mage who rules the island’s people.” Kiran remembered Ruslan saying with casual contempt that lesser mages often sought to rule over nathahlen, as if that would make up for their lack of talent.
“The Voice is never a mage,” Teo said. “The talent to hear the goddess’s desires is thought to reside only in those who have souls quiet enough to listen.” He was silent for a moment, picking his way over the rocks. “I believed the Voice was truly the vessel of the goddess and that I did Nakoali’s sacred work. Even when I first stopped a man’s heart in sanctioned execution, I didn’t let the dismay I felt afterward disturb my faith. The Voice had told us he was a murderer. I believed he deserved death, though the act left me sleepless and sick for days after.”
Kiran couldn’t look at Teo. The first time he’d killed a man, he had wanted with every spark of ikilhia within him to do it again.
Teo continued, “But one night, unable to sleep, I overheard a conversation between the Voice and the island’s wealthiest shipbuilder. The man I killed hadn’t been a murderer at all, just a craftsman who’d thought to lead others in protesting conditions in the shipyards. The Voice didn’t hear Nakoali’s desire, but chose based on her own wish to maintain the shipbuilder’s support of the temple.”
His voice grew strained. “I thought this an aberration. I thought all I had to do was speak out. But when I did, no one listened. The Voice told everyone I’d grown sick in the mind, seeing delusions in place of truth. The other adepts, the islanders, even my own family—all of them believed her. The Voice ordered me confined, saying she would seek a cure for me, but I knew I would be killed. I escaped and fled across the sea. The mages of Yekaia sent a storm after me, but I prayed to Nakoali and she preserved me. I reached Arkennland’s shores alive.”
“You think the goddess saved you,” Kiran said.
Teo laughed without mirth. “Ah, yes. Your master raised you to worship only him. Did you never consider that he lied to you in that, too?”
“If gods exist, they are every bit as cruelly indifferent to suffering as Ruslan,” Kiran said, bitterly certain he spoke truth.
“You think so? And yet you have been offered love and friendship, undeserving. Given the chance to see what wrong you do and change your path.”
That wasn’t the gods. That was Alisa, Dev, even Lena, choosing of their own will to help him. But this was a conversation Kiran didn’t want to have. His scant memories of Alisa and Lena were too painful, and he had no desire to dwell on Dev. He was anxious enough to find him already.
“I still don’t see why you detest magic. You said yourself you believe it a gift of your goddess.”
“Not a gift,” Teo said. “A test. For all mortals, not just the mage-born, and we fail it again and again, turning gift into darkest curse.” He tipped his head back, looking up to where the overhanging cliff burned gold with sun. His expression was pained as if he saw a paradise he could not reach.
“When I first came to Arkennland, I sought a way to bring the true worship of Nakoali back to my home. But everywhere I traveled, magic was the tool of those who sought their own desires, not those of the gods. Over and over, I’ve seen the pattern repeated: mages either slide into selfish arrogance or are coerced into serving rulers who wield them as weapons. You’ve seen the truth of this yourself.”
Thinking of Ninavel and Alathia, Kiran couldn’t deny it. And yet… “Just because a pattern is common doesn’t mean it is inevitable.” The world was large and full of lands neither he nor Teo had ever seen. Somewhere, a place might exist where mage-born and nathahlen alike had found a better path.
Teo said, “I think the goddess waits for the pattern to be broken, but humankind hasn’t yet the strength. I know I haven’t. At first I believed I would never yield to my darker impulses and fail the goddess as the Voice had. But everywhere I went, the moment I cast, men and women without scruples sniffed me out and tried to bribe or threaten me into serving their purpose. In Odrasann, city of the hundred waters, I weakened. I had friends I didn’t want hurt, I—the details no longer matter. Suffice it to say that I am ashamed of what I did there. I knew, after, that I had failed Nakoali’s test. I went to the waters of Inaseil, greatest of rivers. I let the currents taste my blood and carry it to the distant sea, and I made my vow. If I hadn’t the strength the goddess might desire, I could at least ensure my soul would not be further corrupted, and that those I cared for might live in safety.”
His shoulders slumped. “That last part was a foolish hope, it seems. Even without casting, I can’t escape those who seek to use me.”
Like you, he didn’t say, but Kiran heard it just the same. He’d forced Teo’s help, threatened his friends, shattered their lives as if by an explosion of magefire. He’d intended no harm, but he’d caused it anyway.
“I understand why you hid your nature,” Kiran said. “Lies always seem so much safer. But I think…I think they cause more harm, in the end. If I’d told you the truth earlier of what Dev and I faced, maybe…” Maybe w
e could have avoided the hunt. Maybe Veddis would yet live. He couldn’t say the words; they were too painful.
Teo flinched away from him. “You think I was wrong to conceal my past from Raishal. But had she known it, she still would never forgive me for letting Veddis fall.”
Kiran didn’t answer, distracted. A flicker of life danced at the edge of his shuttered senses. Fluted buttresses blocked his view down the canyon, but relief burst bright in his heart.
“Someone’s coming. It must be Dev.” At last! Kiran hurried forward, ready to call out in glad greeting.
A dark female figure rounded a protruding flake of stone. Kiran stopped dead in surprise.
“Zadikah?” Teo said, disbelieving, even as Zadikah gaped at them and demanded, “What are you doing here?”
Something akin to dread passed over Teo’s face. “You had no message from Bayyan?”
“No.” Zadikah wasn’t looking at Teo, only Kiran, her eyes cold and wary. “Teo, come here and tell me. Why have you left the valley?”
Teo stood as motionless as if his distress had changed him to stone. Fear was fast rising in Kiran. He felt no other spark of life approaching.
“Where is Dev?” he asked.
Zadikah lunged to grab Teo’s wrist. “Come away from Kiran. He’s lied to us—he’s a mage. He dares not cast, but his touch is death. He murdered my kin, he—”
“I know what he is,” Teo said hoarsely. “Just as I know what you and Dev were doing in the city.”
Zadikah’s head rocked back. “Is that why you’re traveling toward Prosul Akheba? Because Kiran broke his promise and spilled all my secrets as heedlessly as he spilled the lives of my kin?”
“No,” Teo said. “Zadikah, listen—”
“Where is Dev?” Kiran shouted, loud enough to set echoes bouncing in garbled cacophony off the canyon’s sculpted walls.
Zadikah bared her teeth at him. “The black-daggers have him. Gavila made a deal with a certain ally of mine—Yashad abi Mahar, who now rules the Khalat. The same deal you heard my mother offer me, except with Dev as the prize.”
Kiran couldn’t breathe. “You let Gavila take him?”
Zadikah backed a step, dragging Teo with her. “It wasn’t a question of let. I didn’t know Yashad had betrayed him until far too late. I tried to convince Dev to run, but he was determined to get the herbs for you. Before he could leave the Khalat, the black-daggers captured him. Gavila has a message for you: if you don’t wish your friend given to demons, you must come to the Jadrash Almek, the Sandcat’s Lair—it’s a canyon on her lands.”
A canyon where the ssarez-kai would be waiting, Kiran was certain. He groped for the support of the rock buttress beside him, struggling to think past shock and dismay.
Teo shook free of Zadikah’s grip. “Zadikah, listen. The red-horned hunters came to our camp last night. Gavila set them on Kiran’s trail with blood she took from him.”
Now Zadikah was the one who looked too stunned to breathe. “Shaikar’s hunt came to you?” Her eyes widened, her hands falling. “Teo, where are Raishal and Veddis?”
“Raishal is safe with the snake-eaters,” Teo said. “But Veddis…oh, Zadikah…”
“No,” Zadikah said. “No. Don’t you tell me he’s dead—don’t you dare—”
Teo didn’t look capable of further speech. Kiran said, “When the hunt came, we climbed high on the rocks to escape them, but…” There was no easy way to say it. “Veddis fell and the hunters killed him. I’m sorry, Zadikah.”
Zadikah keened a wild, grieving cry. She rounded on Teo. “How could you leave Raishal? She must be devastated.”
Teo made a choked noise and forced out words. “She is. But Zadikah, there is more I must tell you.”
Kiran winced. He’d been the one to say that truth was better, but he could only imagine the pain Teo would feel upon explaining it. “Teo, maybe I should—”
“Shut up.” Teo faced Zadikah and in broken phrases laced with anguish, he told her the truth, full and unflinching. Of himself, of Kiran and Ruslan and demons, of Veddis’s death and Raishal’s fury afterward, of their exile from Bayyan’s lands.
Zadikah listened in silence, though her hands fisted trembling at her sides. When Teo at last finished, she stood rigid, her face all hard, obsidian angles.
“Zadikah…” Teo’s body was braced like he expected a blow.
“I need to think.” She flung away from him, disappearing behind the sinuous line of a buttress. Kiran heard a fleshy thud as if she’d hit the rock with a fist, followed by the hoarse, uneven sound of her breathing. She reappeared, pacing, suppressed violence in every lurching step she took.
Kiran felt like attacking something himself, but with magefire. He said to Teo, “I have to get Dev free.” Without either alerting Ruslan or throwing himself into the hands of the ssarez-kai.
Teo didn’t respond. Kiran wasn’t even certain he’d heard. His eyes never left Zadikah, grief and anguish stark in them.
Kiran couldn’t wait any longer. He called to Zadikah, “Will you at least tell me how to get to this Sandcat’s Lair, and anything you know of the surrounding terrain? Whatever you think of me, Dev did nothing but help you. He doesn’t deserve betrayal and death in return.”
Glowering at Kiran, Zadikah said, “Gavila means you to come to the Jadrash Almek, but that’s not where she’s taking Dev. Nor is he the only captive she took in the city. She babbled of giving them all to demons. I didn’t believe that part, but now…”
“Now you know she sent Shaikar’s hunt after me, you believe it.” Kiran’s heart pounded with fear and hope combined. He must convince her to help him. “Where is Gavila taking her captives?”
Zadikah said, “To the black-daggers’ most sacred ground. The tears of the god, a series of pools that never dry up even in the worst heat. Above the largest pool, there’s an arch that’s said to be a gate to Shaikar’s realm, though nobody’s even pretended to glimpse a demon there in generations.”
“How do I get there?” Kiran demanded.
Her eyes narrowed, holding his. “The ordinary approaches will be watched, but I know a route that may let you reach the pools in secret. I will guide you there, but on one condition: you must help me kill Gavila.”
Both offer and condition left Kiran slack-jawed in surprise. “You want me to take her life?” He had expected fear, revulsion, anger from Zadikah, as he’d received from Teo, but not this. Gavila was her kin. Was Zadikah really so eager to murder her?
Teo too was boggling at Zadikah. “Gavila is the one you blame?”
“Would you prefer I blamed you?” Zadikah snapped. “Or perhaps you were hoping I’d join you in casting all the blame onto Kiran and his lies?”
“I would understand it more,” Teo said.
Zadikah said, “I know what it is to make choices out of desperation and fear. I won’t say I’m not angry with you for deceiving me, and angrier with Kiran”—her gaze raked over him, brutal as one of Ruslan’s—“but what use are recriminations? It’s the future I look to. What I see there…it’s Gavila who unleashed Shaikar’s hunt without concern for what lives they might take. Gavila who is ignoring every warning the old tales hold about Shaikar’s children, and blindly inviting disaster.”
She spat, her face twisting. “I cut my kin-ties rather than stand up to her, and now I curse my own selfish cowardice. I can’t get Veddis back—adrashei kaz, I pray the tales are wrong, that his soul was not devoured by the hunters along with his body!—but in honor of him, I can fight to see that no one else suffers such a death.”
“By using Kiran as your weapon,” Teo said.
Zadikah’s smile at Kiran was not a pleasant thing. “I doubt he minds.”
No, Kiran didn’t mind. He didn’t want to hurt innocents, but Gavila was no innocent. He’d happily take her life. Especially if she’d hurt Dev.
From the cut of Teo’s glance, he knew just what Kiran was thinking. “Violence often seems the easier path, but it’s never the
right one. If you want to stop Gavila, that’s not the way.”
“Sometimes violence is the only way!” Zadikah flung her hands wide, glaring. “Change isn’t possible without cost. You don’t understand, Teo. You never have. It’s why I didn’t tell you what I was doing. Now I know why you’re so blind to the truth of the world. As a mage, you’ve never known what real suffering is like. You think everything can be easy, like it must have been for you.”
“Easy?” Teo repeated, incredulous. A dark flush stained his slanting cheekbones. His chest swelled, as if inflating with words ready to explode free.
To divert the shouting he saw coming, Kiran said, “Teo, Zadikah’s right to fear what Gavila might do. You saw Vidai in my memories. Sometimes one death can save thousands.”
“You should be grateful I don’t believe that,” Teo said. “Otherwise you would be the one dead.”
“Teo,” Zadikah said, startled.
Kiran didn’t flinch; he’d deserved the hit. “Come with us, then. Maybe we can find another solution.” Even if part of him clamored that he didn’t want another solution.
Now Zadikah was the one glaring at him. “I don’t want to argue the entire way. Besides…” Her gaze shifted to Teo, and her scowl faded into something more rueful. “Whatever secrets you’ve kept from me, however differently we see the world, I still want you safe. And Raishal—how can you let her push you away so easily? She’s quick to anger, I know, but she needs you, Teo.”
Teo said tautly, “Raishal has made her wishes clear, and I will respect them. She’s never found forgiveness easy. One day, I hope…” He made a helpless gesture, as if unable even to voice that hope. “You know as well as I do that her anger won’t relent any time soon. Yet my heart weeps, thinking of her enduring this grief alone—Zadi, please. Her love for you remains. Won’t you go to her?”
“I’ll go to her when I can bring her news that Gavila has paid for Veddis’s death. That will cheer her more than any comfort I might give now.”
If Kiran were in Raishal’s place, he would far prefer to have Zadikah safe at his side instead of chasing after revenge, but he couldn’t bring himself to say so. Without Zadikah’s help, he had little chance of finding Gavila in time to stop her giving Dev to the ssarez-kai.
The Labyrinth of Flame (The Shattered Sigil Book 3) Page 25