The Labyrinth of Flame (The Shattered Sigil Book 3)

by Courtney Schafer

  It drove him wild not to know. Yet he’d had no success in contacting the scarred demon again. The desert they’d traveled had been devoid of magic. Even when the moon was high, he hadn’t heard so much as a whisper of demonic presence. The tales Zadikah had shared spoke of summoning demons with music. Surely in Ninavel’s markets you’ve heard the wails of demon-singers, she’d said. Men and women who claim to know the ancient songs that attract demons and sway them to hurt enemies…for a price. The singers are frauds, of course. The ancient songs were too complex for a single voice. Our tales say that dozens of singers were needed, trained to create harmonies with perfect precision.

  Kiran had gotten a flash of the soaring beauty of the song he’d heard in the great temple chamber. Maybe an Alathian mage could replicate that, trained as they were in singing to cast spells, but he certainly couldn’t.

  Teo said, “What if we come across another current in the caves? Or even a confluence? From what you say of these never-emptying pools, Zadikah, I have a feeling they sit over a reservoir of magical energy.”

  Kiran was terrified of just that. To come all this way and be forced to stop short so he wouldn’t endanger them all by attracting demons—frustration seethed in him at the very idea.

  There was time yet before the sun set. “Give me more hadaf,” Kiran said. “I’ll search my memories while we wait for nightfall.”

  “I don’t see how that will help,” Teo said. “You haven’t found anything of use so far.”

  “Before, I was trying to find out how to summon a demon,” Kiran said. “This time I intend to focus on something different.”

  “Like what?” Zadikah asked. Despite her reserve, she always listened with focused attention when Kiran spoke of demons. That fit with her stated goal of freeing her clan from their alliance with the ssarez-kai; so far he’d seen nothing in her that would suggest she hadn’t dealt honestly with him.

  “Protection,” Kiran said. “The bone mage who cast upon me was far too clever not to research how to shield herself from the demons she served. I spent hours standing in her workroom while she cast. I must have seen or heard something I can use.”

  Teo and Zadikah exchanged a glance of shared skepticism, a silent communion that was the closest Kiran had yet seen them come to their old rapport. Teo opened his pack.

  “I suppose it’ll stop you from driving Zadikah mad with your fidgeting.” He unwrapped a twist of oilcloth and handed Kiran one of the sticky-sweet balls clumped within.

  Kiran put the hadaf in his mouth. It seemed to work faster each time he chewed it. Within moments, he felt centered in a pool of calm, the world outside his mind distant and unimportant.

  Protection, he thought, and summoned the memory of the mage’s desiccated voice, her cold eyes that saw him as nothing more than clay waiting to be shaped. She must have known a better way to avoid demonic attention than cowering on ground devoid of magic. Standing outside the forbidding wall at the heart of his mind, he begged his childhood self, Show me how to stay safe from them.

  Like a rill of poisoned water, memory seeped forth to enfold him.

  Kiran stumbled along the temple corridor, his wrist caught in the grip of a man he could barely see through drifting veils of color. The scorpions were silent, their attention elsewhere, but even on nights when Kiran heard no whispers, he still saw things no one else seemed to notice. The adults didn’t flinch from the drifting fire that stained the air, or walk blindly into walls as Kiran did when swirling colors hid the temple’s stone. The fire wasn’t so bad—the glimmery kind didn’t burn him, and the patterns it made were pretty—but Kiran was terrified of the huge prowling monsters that were all shifting shadows and spiked limbs. Their hunger made his head hurt until he wanted to scream. Worse were the bodies lying in the halls, all torn and bloody with charred holes for eyes. The adults walked through them like the bodies weren’t there, and got angry with him when he tried to dodge.

  The grip on his wrist jerked him to a halt. The door in front of Kiran was outlined in a blaze of colors that made him cringe away. The door-fire was the kind that hurt. Even standing close made his head ache.

  The man holding him thumped a fist on the door, and it creaked open.

  “What is it?” a familiar voice demanded.

  Kiran shivered. It was the lady with fire burning inside her, who crumbled bones in her fingers and hurt him no matter how he screamed. A whine rose in his throat; he swallowed it down, hunching small in hope he wouldn’t draw the bone-lady’s attention.

  She was standing beside a stone table stacked with piles of her nasty bones. Ripples of poisonous green flickered and twisted above one bone pile, and more green light crawled over the great jagged pattern inset into the chamber’s back wall.

  For once, the bone-lady didn’t have a book in her hands. But on the far side of the chamber, a stone block as tall as she was had been pulled out of the wall. The narrow space beyond was lined with hundreds of books, of all shapes and sizes.

  “I’ve brought the boy,” the man holding Kiran announced.

  The bone-lady would hurt him again. Kiran tugged in helpless desperation against the grip on his wrist. The man—Kiran recognized him now, it was the mustached man with the sour scowl—didn’t even look down at him.

  “I’ve no time for him tonight,” the bone-lady said. “I need to keep watch. I sensed something earlier. The merest hint of foreign magic beyond our veils…too thin a spoor for me to identify, which in itself is worrisome.”

  Kiran barely heard the rest of her words, too focused on the first. She wouldn’t be hurting him tonight. The colors drifting around him faded to gossamer, the stone of walls and floor more solidly real than it had felt in days.

  “Why so worried?” the sour man asked. “You’ve always dealt easily enough with outsiders who come sniffing around our veils.”

  “The last mage who breached our wards was no weakling. If not for the aid of those we serve, it’d be my bones bleaching in the vats, not hers. A mage skilled enough to probe our defenses and leave so little trace may be more dangerous yet.”

  Kiran seized on one word: outsiders. There really were people living somewhere outside the temple? The amayas in the child garden had told stories of such things, but he’d never been sure the tales were true.

  “So ask Shaikar’s children for aid again. Let them hunt down this clever mage.”

  “Not until I have a better scent. They won’t be pleased if I beg their intervention over nothing more than hints and fears. They’ve little skill for distinguishing human mages and their spellwork—much as you might have trouble distinguishing individual ants.”

  Kiran was an ant to the bone-lady and the sour man. Something they cared nothing for and were happy to crush. But in the stories the amayas had told of other lands, adults were different. They didn’t hurt children; they were kind to them. They protected them from monsters.

  He wished he could go to one of those lands. If only he could, maybe the adults there would protect him too.

  The sour man grunted. “Let us hope Shaikar’s children continue to think of us as ants and forget that ants can bite.” He glanced down at Kiran. “I’ll admit, the boy’s lasted longer than I thought. Send for me when you’re ready to continue working with him.”

  He pulled Kiran away from the door and down the corridor. Kiran followed blindly, ignoring wavering curtains of fire and the occasional shadowy pile of bloodied flesh. He was caught up in an idea so huge and tantalizing he could think of nothing else.

  What if he really could sneak out of the temple and find a place like those in the tales? A land without scorpions and monsters and fear, where adults were kind and the world made sense? Bright visions of half-remembered stories danced in his head, vivid with the force of his longing.

  “Back to bed, boy.” The sour man shoved him inside a darkened room and shut the door. Vicious yellow fire blazed to life around the doorframe.

  Kiran was alone amid the shadowed shapes o
f cots. Both Jain and Ralia were gone now. Sometimes he wondered if he’d imagined them.

  The scorpions weren’t watching tonight. It would be a good time to run. But how? The window was open, letting in cool air and the sweet scents of the night-blooming flowers lining the courtyard outside, but he couldn’t climb through. Fire burned around the window, ugly and yellow and dangerous just like that around the door. The forbidding pulse of it beat in his head the same way he felt the monsters’ hunger or heard the scorpions’ voices.

  He would be stuck in this room until the sour man came for him again. The bone-lady would hurt him more, and the scorpions would laugh. Kiran glared at the window fire, hating it, hating everything. He didn’t want to be trapped here. He wanted to tear his way through the fire to the night beyond. He clawed with angry, hopeless hands at the yellow blaze, no longer caring if it burned him.

  Pain seared his fingers. Something twisted inside him, sharp and strange enough to stop his breath. Flames died away into sparks that soon faded entirely. Kiran blinked, hardly daring to believe the fire had gone. Sucking on sore fingers, he edged closer to the window, until he was leaning out the frame.

  No lash of agony struck him. The courtyard outside was all cool, inviting shadows and silver moonlight empty of fire or phantoms. The only sound was the faint rustle of leaves in the night breeze.

  Kiran flung his legs over the windowsill and slithered out. He landed on something leafy and yielding, sending up a cloud of flower-scent so strong it made him want to sneeze. He clamped a hand over his nose and mouth and crawled out of the bush.

  Was that the creak of door hinges? The adults would see his bed empty. They would guess where he’d gone. He had to get away.

  The courtyard’s far wall was covered in fat white flowers glimmering in the moonlight. Amid the tangle of vines, an iron gate stood invitingly open. Kiran ran for the gate, a desperate litany repeating in his head: don’t see me don’t see me don’t see me—

  He crashed headlong into something hard that grunted in surprise. Strong hands caught his shoulders. He tried to jerk free, but his body wouldn’t move. His skin tingled and prickled as if spiders crawled over him. Red mist swirled around him, blurring his vision.

  “What have you there, brother?” a woman asked, the words soft but strange-sounding. Some parts were harsher, others more gliding than they should be.

  Kiran’s captor spoke: a deep, male voice, as strong as the hands prisoning him. “A temple mouse…a frightened mouse. What does it run from, I wonder?”

  Greedy tendrils burst into Kiran’s head, prying at him as though he was a scrap of cloth they wanted to unravel. He screamed, but all that escaped past his locked throat was an agonized whimper. Instinctively, he fought to tear the tendrils away as he had the fire at the window.

  “Ah!” His captor sounded more surprised than ever. “Liza, do you see? The boy had veiled himself. But now—ah, how his ikilhia burns…” The prying tendrils melted into soothing warmth. “Hush, child. I won’t harm such a bright one as you. Show me who you are and why you were running.”

  The gentle warmth spread through Kiran, washing away his fear, wrapping him in comfort and strength. He relaxed into the man’s grip, all thought of fighting gone. He’d felt nothing like this, not since the child garden, and he never wanted it to stop.

  The man’s breath hissed out. “Oh, these fools. Look what they’ve done—they’ve nearly ruined him. He has not a shred of protection. If this canyon’s confluence were as large as Ninavel’s, he’d be dead long since. Even so, it’s a miracle he’s endured this long.”

  Liza said, “All we’ve seen in this temple so far are fools, true, but it was no idiot-brained nathahlen who caused Idarantis’s death-sigil to glow. If we’re to avenge her, then we must tread cautiously until we know who bested her and how. Every moment I continue to veil us increases our risk of discovery. So come, brother. Set aside this distraction. Put the child out of his misery if you must, but—”

  “Liza, look at him!” The man’s arms tightened around Kiran. “We might search for centuries before we found another soul so bright. Do you remember when I asked Vasha how we might know to choose an akhelysh, and she said there would be no choice—that we would know, heart and soul alike?”

  “You cannot be serious!”

  Kiran knotted his hands in the man’s silken shirt, struggling to speak. Don’t let me go, he wanted to say. Please, I want to stay with you.

  The warmth enfolding Kiran shifted into a fierce, wordless surge of assent.

  Liza said, “Ruslan, truly? You want this child, of all children? Damaged, his mind and ikilhia in tatters? If we take him, we will only alert Idarantis’s killer to our presence.”

  “I want him.” The conviction pulsing through Kiran doubled. “If we must change our strategy to fight here and now, so be it. You and I together have the strength to prevail against any enemy. Afterward, the boy is young enough he can recover. If I break the bindings on his body, wall off the damaged areas of his mind and protect him properly, he will heal. And then…ah, Liza. Think what an akhelysh he will make.”

  For a wondrous instant, Kiran saw himself, tall and strong and adult, standing in a room made of shining white stone. A broad-shouldered man wearing clothes marked with strange red and black symbols put a hand on the adult Kiran’s shoulder, smiling, and adult-Kiran knelt with smooth grace, adoration bright in his eyes. Blue fire spiraled from his hands to join with red fire sparking off the other man, building a swirling structure so intricate and beautiful that Kiran’s heart seized with confused longing.

  Cool, slender fingers brushed Kiran’s brow, and the vision faded. “Rushenka, I agree that his magical potential is incredible. You may even be right that he can heal, though I find it hard to imagine when he is more than halfway to madness. But, look…”

  An old, half-forgotten memory welled up: Kiran was in the child garden, weeping because Jain had downed a bird with a stone.

  “He is not you, Rushenka. His heart is too soft. I know what you see when you look at him. Have you not shared with me the suffering you endured before Vasha found you? But what you endured made you strong. This child has not that same strength.”

  Terror spiked through Kiran. She wanted Ruslan to leave him here with the bone-lady. He’d never feel the warmth rippling through him again. He fought the block on his throat.

  “I can be strong,” he gasped out. “Please, take me with you!”

  Ruslan smoothed Kiran’s hair off his face and traced the line of his cheek. “If I take you, will you always obey me? No matter what I should ask of you?”

  “Yes,” Kiran assured him. “Anything you want—I’ll be whatever you want—just please, please, don’t leave me here.”

  Ruslan cradled him close. “With the proper training, softness can be tempered into steel. Look, Liza…” Another memory seeped up: Kiran forcing a new, smaller boy to give over a favorite wagon-toy, because Ralia had asked him to do it. Kiran had felt bad, especially when the smaller boy started sobbing, but he’d wanted so much for Ralia to like him. She was older and cleverer and knew all the best games.

  “All he needs is the right mage-brother or sister to show him the proper path, as you did for me.”

  “Ruslan…” Liza’s voice softened further.

  “I want him,” Ruslan repeated, as if nothing else in the world mattered.

  Liza sighed. “I never could refuse you anything. He certainly is a beautiful child. I just hope he’s worth the danger you bring us. To fight when we haven’t yet a proper understanding of our enemy…”

  “Kiran can help us with that.” Ruslan cupped Kiran’s chin. “You hate those who hurt you, do you not? Are you brave enough to help me punish them for it?”

  Kiran didn’t want to go anywhere near the bone-lady again. But he’d told Ruslan he could be strong.

  “Yes,” he said faintly.

  “Good.” Ruslan took Kiran’s hand. “Then come with me and hold to that bravery
. Whatever comes, I promise you, I will protect you from harm.”

  The utter certainty of that promise rang through Kiran like a struck bell. When Ruslan led him toward the temple, he gladly followed. For the first time since he’d left the child garden, he felt safe.

  Memory dissolved in a red blaze of anguish. Kiran struggled to breathe, tears wet on his cheeks. His heart hurt with a pain so deep it shattered all thought. He curled in on himself with a cry.

  Hands touched him, oddly tentative. “Hush. You must calm yourself, or scouts may hear you.”

  He was done obeying Ruslan. He twisted away. “Why couldn’t you be the savior I thought you? How can you comfort me and yet be so cruel?”

  “Kiran. What you see is only memory. Set it aside and come back to us.”

  The voice was quiet and level and not at all like Ruslan’s. Kiran blinked and saw sunset colors limned over sharp-etched turrets of rock. Teo was a dark shape so close Kiran could hear him breathing. Zadikah was invisible in the shadows but for the spark of her ikilhia.

  “Sorry,” Kiran muttered, glad of the darkness that hid the burning of his cheeks. “I was confused. I hope no black-daggers heard me.”

  “You thought I was Ruslan.” Teo sounded so careful, as if he was afraid Kiran would lose all sense and start yelling again. Irrational anger swept Kiran. He wasn’t some fragile thing that would break into uselessness. The storm that raged in his heart was nothing new, after all.

  He strove to speak with cool dispassion. “I remembered how Ruslan found me at the temple.” He crossed his arms, wishing he could stop shivering. The night wasn’t cold.

  “But did you learn anything about protection from demons?” Zadikah asked, as pragmatic as Dev might be in her place.

  A laugh escaped Kiran, harsh as a raven’s call. “The only protection I found then is impossible now.” He didn’t want to explain more than that. Teo and Zadikah wouldn’t understand. Nobody would, not even Dev. They all saw Ruslan as a monster, pure and simple. But that wasn’t the truth, not all of it. It wouldn’t hurt so much if it were.