The Labyrinth of Flame (The Shattered Sigil Book 3)

by Courtney Schafer

  Teo began a startled protest, turning to Zadikah. His mouth fell open, his words dying when he saw the blood on her hand.

  Zadikah’s chin lifted. “I didn’t lie. I will kill Gavila. But with my own hands, not yours.”

  “Then why trap Kiran?” Teo demanded.

  “Because Gavila will see the stone of Cadah glow above the pools, and know Cadah’s trap holds a mage as prey. She’ll think I’ve done her bidding. She’ll believe she’s turned me to her purpose—and in her triumph, she won’t be wary. I’ll kill her, and then by blood-right I will stand in her place.”

  Struggling for calm, Kiran said, “So you can…what? Rule the black-daggers as she does?” If Zadikah knew how to trigger Cadah’s trap, she might also know how to release it. But he couldn’t talk her into releasing him without understanding what she wanted. He hadn’t thought her interested in ruling others. Had he misread her so badly?

  “No! I’m no godspeaker.” Zadikah grimaced as if the very idea was distasteful. “When Shaikar’s children come, I’ll tell them that if they want you, they must promise to leave once they have you and never return. The tales all agree: once given, a demon’s word binds all their kind more strongly than any spell-sealed vow, and they honor the old laws of bargaining and blood-right. You even confirmed as much when you told us of your encounter in the mountains. When you invoked blood-right, the demon yielded to you and left your friends unharmed.”

  Her expression turned all the more adamant. “This is what I want. To remove the danger for the sake of all who live in the clanlands.”

  So he hadn’t misjudged her motives, only her means. He had to break her cold chain of logic.

  “The demons think of me as some kind of kin.” A notion that even now Kiran hated to say aloud, as if speaking it made it true. He was human, not demon. “You have no such advantage. To them you’re nothing more than a rat to despise. You’re the one who said the tales of demons are full of warnings. Release the wards, let me out, and I’ll—I’ll use my kinship to bargain for you—I can claim blood-right as I did in the cirque, and make the demons leave.” He was babbling, he knew it, but he couldn’t think what else to offer.

  “I trust you even less than I trust a demon,” Zadikah said.

  Kiran saw the truth in her eyes. She didn’t just want the demons gone. She wanted him punished for Veddis’s death.

  Teo grabbed her shoulders. “Zadi. I don’t care what Kiran has done. Giving him in cold blood to demons is no kind of answer.”

  Zadikah flung him off. “Then what is? Don’t you think I listened when you told me how deeply you feared Kiran? How worried you were that more people would die if you cured him? I’m doing what you lack the courage for. Kiran will be gone, and his enemies with him, and all you have to do is nothing. Just like you’ve always done. Unless you would cast to stop me?”

  She threw the question at Teo like a dare she wanted him to accept. Almost, Kiran hoped…but Teo shook his head.

  “You know I won’t. But I won’t stand beside you either. Now or ever again. What you do is wrong, Zadikah.”

  Pain leaped vivid on Zadikah’s face, but she stayed resolute. “What I do is necessary. You don’t understand. I wish you did. But I won’t let regret stop me.”

  She was backing away. Newly desperate, Kiran called to her, “What about Dev? Will you at least free him?”

  “He’s already free. Yashad spoke truth in her letter. She sent Bayyan to rescue him. Bayyan won’t have failed. Take comfort in that if you can.” She turned and ran.

  “Zadikah!” Teo charged after her.

  “Teo, wait!” Kiran lunged for the archway and got knocked back again. He feared Teo would chase after Zadikah regardless, but Teo reappeared out of the darkness.

  Kiran said hurriedly, “Her blood will mark where she touched. Did you hear her speak a trigger word?”

  “No.” Teo scrubbed a hand over his eyes, his expression that of a man hoping to wake from a nightmare. “Maybe from here outside the spell I can find a weakness you might exploit. I know if you cast, Ruslan will feel it, but you might have a chance to escape before he can translocate here, just as you did in the Whitefires.”

  Kiran barely heard him, a horrible new implication exploding dark in his head. The power caging him was so strong, he should have sensed far more than that elusive wisp sleeping in the stone. Unless the trap had been specifically veiled against him by a mage who knew enough of his blood and power to key the spell.

  “This isn’t Gavila’s trap. It’s Ruslan’s. He’s the only one who could have hidden this spell so well from me. He’s already on his way.” Kiran crushed panic down, clinging to control. “Teo, find Dev. If Gavila has him, you’ve got to get him away.” He didn’t trust at all in Zadikah’s claim of rescue.

  Teo’s face was sallow in the light blazing out of the chamber. “If Ruslan is coming for you, all the more reason I should try to help you get free.”

  Yes, part of Kiran howled. Stay and help me! But that was foolishness. What chance that Teo—who likely hadn’t even looked at a ward pattern in years—could find a weakness amid the strange, wild chaos of the black-dagger girl’s magic before Ruslan arrived?

  “Ruslan will kill you if he finds you here. Run while you can! Find Dev and tell him that I won’t give up. I’ll fight to the end, but he might have to finish that fight for me.” Teo could help Dev against Ruslan—if not with magic, then with his contacts among the scholars of the collegium.

  Teo didn’t move. “It sounds to me like you’re giving up now.”

  “There’s one chance left to me.” Kiran drew his belt knife and put the point to his forearm. “Wards are no barrier to demons. If I spill my blood on ground marked by this much power, that’s a beacon the scarred demon can’t ignore.” A beacon that would work equally well to draw the attention of the ssarez-kai, but he’d have to hope the scarred demon came first.

  Teo’s frown deepened. “You’d trust a demon to save you? You don’t even know the reason they want you.”

  “You want a better plan? Cast on Zadikah. Force her to return to you. Then take the knowledge of how to release the wards from her mind.” He’d cast on her himself, but the wards entrapping him were powerful enough to deflect any spell he attempted.

  Teo’s shoulders tightened. “I won’t—”

  “I know you won’t. So go. Help Dev, since you can’t help me.”

  Teo flinched. “If that’s what you wish.” And then, softer, “Kiran…I’m sorry.”

  He was gone before the final word faded from the air. Kiran took a shuddering breath and sliced a line down his arm. Blood dripped black onto the blazing crystal lines at his feet.

  He dipped a finger in the pooled blood and sent a thread of his own ikilhia crackling into it, along with an image of the demon: the predatory beauty of its ice-white face, the indigo blaze of its eyes, the ragged darkness of the mark on its brow. Help me, he called, silent and desperate. Or whatever knowledge you want from my memories will be forever lost to you.

  Chapter Fifteen

  (Dev)

  It’d been long years since I last had to creep down a climb under cover of darkness, fearing that the least noise I made would lead to my death. But my old handler Red Dal had drilled all his Tainters so well in how to move soft and sly while spidering up and down highside towers that the skill hadn’t deserted me. I wasn’t worried about the climbing—a good clean finger-crack split the overhang’s stone, easy to feel in the dark—though I did feel a little twitchy about the chance of meeting another scorpion. But my real fear was for human enemies; a heart-poundingly short distance away, the dark shapes of clanfolk crowded the starlit basin.

  The black-daggers hadn’t lit so much as a candle lantern. Gavila and the clan elders were busy chanting a wavering call-and-response song that Bayyan had said was some kind of paean to Shaikar. I’d seen no glow from the jagged lump of crystal by the pool, and nobody had yet given the scholars any taphtha.

  That
was the only good news. If the black-daggers spotted me, I didn’t have much chance of protection. All I carried were two flashfire charms and a barrier charm that Bayyan had warned me wasn’t strong enough to last more than a few moments. He claimed that was all he had on him besides his sling and a blood-boil charm he insisted on keeping for himself.

  Probably so he could more easily kill me along with the scholars if I got caught. Bayyan had heard enough from Gavila to convince him he shouldn’t leave her any chance of a successful bargain. I’d heard it in his flat whisper when he bade me farewell.

  Easing farther down the cliff, I glanced across the basin, to where a deep v-cut split a looming wall of stone. Behind the v-cut was a smooth-walled pocket that looked like a god had idly punched a finger deep into the rock. Above the v-cut, contorted spindles of stone split the stars. Bayyan was skulking among the spindles, searching out any hidden scouts and knifing them. Hopefully as quietly as I was climbing down this cliff.

  More snail-slow shifts of balance, ignoring the burn of overtaxed muscles. The two scholars were a blot of deeper shadow below and to the right of me. The initiate boy was repeating a gulping, desperate prayer that I could hear in the breaks between Gavila and her kin singing to each other.

  The apt-Scholar was silent. I caught the glitter of her eyes: she’d seen me. She made no sound that would draw attention and give me away. In the darkness she wouldn’t recognize me as a former captive, but she must hope I was an enemy of the black-daggers, come to attack them.

  My feet touched sand, and I slunk toward the scholars. The nearest clanfolk were mere bodylengths away. They’d penned up the scholars against the cliff, never thinking someone could sneak down a climb so overhanging.

  The boy spotted me. His mumbled prayer hitched, but he had the smarts to recover himself and keep right on going. I crouched behind him and sawed through his bonds, then the apt-Scholar’s, slow and silent.

  The chanting cut off. I near jumped out of my skin, thinking I’d been spotted. But no—a scarlet glow was growing beside the pool, painting Gavila’s lean form in tones of blood.

  Gavila threw her arms skyward and let out a triumphant shriek. Clanfolk jumped to their feet, answering her with eager cries. Red light flooded the basin.

  No more time. I gripped the scholars’ shoulders. “Block your eyes until you hear me yell. Then follow me, and run.”

  Clanfolk turned our way. The closest saw me; the timbre of their shouts changed.

  I chucked one flashfire charm at the nearest ranks, the second deeper into the pack, and squeezed my eyes shut.

  The world glared white through my closed eyelids. Yells turned to howls, startled and pained.

  “Now!” I shouted at the scholars, and ran for the v-cut. I vaulted through it into the rounded pocket of stone. Its walls soared thirty feet high. A handline knotted from strips of Bayyan’s gabeshal robe dangled down one steeply angled slope.

  The scholars crowded through the v-cut right behind me, the woman helping the boy. Beyond, a yelling crowd of half-blind but very angry black-daggers charged our way, only partially impeded by stumbling into each other. Thank Khalmet, I didn’t see any pallid, grinning demons in the bloody light spilling around them.

  “Climb!” I shoved the scholars toward the handline.

  The apt-Scholar wasted no time. She planted her feet on the rock, grabbed the line, and hauled herself up the slope hand over hand, strong and stubborn as a mule. The boy was slower, grunting with strain, his feet slipping as he tried to brace them.

  The frontrunning clanfolk reached the v-cut. I threw the barrier charm. A sheet of deceptively insubstantial light shot up to twice a man’s height, blocking the opening. The first of the warriors bounced off it, clutching a bloodied face, his yell spiraling high with pain and surprise.

  I scrambled straight up the rock next to the scholars. The slope lessened and became a rounded ridge. Bayyan was crouched in the shadows, anchoring the handline. Beyond him, the ridge dropped away into the dark slash of a crevice. Bayyan had a second braided line ready, disappearing into the chasm.

  I grabbed the line with the scholars on it and hauled. The barrier charm’s magic was already fading, the wall of light shrinking. Gavila shrieked something savage.

  The apt-Scholar made the ridge. I jerked my chin at the second line. “Slide down, quietly.” The next part of this depended on misdirection. I had to get the black-daggers all chasing me while Bayyan hid the scholars.

  She obeyed, sliding into darkness with silently efficient speed. Damn it, the boy was still only halfway up.

  “Move!” I yelled at him. He whimpered and scrabbled his feet on the rock.

  A lean young warrior catapulted over the barrier charm’s magic, launched high by two of his friends in a move straight out of a street acrobat’s repertoire. He raced for the rock, vaulted high, and caught the boy’s ankle. The boy cried out and lost his grip on the handline. He tumbled down to land hard in the sand.

  Fuck! I yanked the handline up before the warrior could grab hold of it. That wouldn’t stop him for long; the slope wasn’t that difficult a climb. Another of the black-daggers somersaulted over the shrinking wall of light, yipping in triumph as he landed.

  Bayyan pushed me aside, something silver in his raised hand, aimed to throw.

  The blood-boil charm. Even as I realized it, the charm arced through the air, speeding straight for the prone scholar-boy below. The instant it touched him, his blood would sizzle into vapor in his veins—not a pretty death, but a fast one.

  The charm didn’t reach the boy. Midair, it exploded in a shower of sparks and metal shards. Beside me, Bayyan screamed, harsh and agonized. Blood burst from his eyes, mouth, and ears to spatter me.

  “Bayyan!” I couldn’t move. Not out of shock, but because my muscles wouldn’t obey me. My whole body might as well have turned to stone.

  I knew what held me. Magic. A demon had showed up after all, and I had no way to fight it—oh, mother of maidens, save us—

  Bayyan made a horrible wet sound and collapsed. The world had gone eerily silent. No more howls from the black-daggers, just the sound of my own panicked breathing.

  “Come down,” a woman said, accented in a way that stood every one of my hairs on end.

  Not a demon, but just as bad. Lizaveta, Ruslan’s mage-sister. My body turned without my volition.

  She stood just outside the v-cut, looking straight at me with a satisfied smile. She wore simple black trousers and shirt unmarked by sigils, and her shining black hair was bound into a single braid that spilled over one shoulder to reach her slender waist. A far cry from the elaborate gown and gems she’d worn in Ninavel, but the perfect umber oval of her face was the same, elegant and beautiful as one of Arkennland’s warrior-queens. The impression was helped by the long, wickedly barbed knife that hung at her side.

  All around her, clanfolk stood like they were asleep on their feet, their arms slack and their faces blank. She’d cast on the black-daggers too? I didn’t get why she’d bothered, when she could take their lives as easily as she had Bayyan’s, to feed her power.

  Bayyan. I didn’t fool myself he’d cared a whit for me, but he’d gotten me free of Gavila. If I hadn’t convinced him into chasing after her, he’d be happily counting his war-charms in Prosul Akheba instead of lying dead at my feet.

  The magic compelling me wouldn’t even let me look at him one last time. I slid down the stone to land beside the scholar-boy, unable to stop myself, knowing I was utterly fucked. Lizaveta had made no vow like her mage-brother’s. She could cast anything she liked against me. I’d once watched her torture an Alathian mage until he was nothing more than a shambling, mindburned shell of a man.

  Never mind why she’d cast to turn the black-daggers into a bunch of sleeping statues. Why hadn’t she already started flaying the flesh from my bones?

  I knew the answer to that one. She’d want to be truly inventive with her torments, and Ruslan would want to watch. I moved to sta
nd before her, sweat cold on my brow, nausea growing with every beat of my heart.

  I had only one comfort. “Kiran’s not here.” I’d wanted it to come out confident, even defiant, but my voice shook like the worst sort of coward.

  “Of course he is,” she said, soft and pleased. “Did you not see the glow of the wardstone? A mage stands caught within clever Cadah’s ancient trap. Who else would that mage be but Kiran, hurrying to rescue his pet nathahlen?”

  Kiran trapped? I didn’t want to believe it, but Lizaveta’s certainty was absolute. “So you’re gloating over me because Ruslan sent you to do the scut-work while he’s busy with Kiran?” The instant I said the words, I regretted them. I didn’t want to hear her answer—didn’t want to imagine Ruslan gleefully ripping out all Kiran’s humanity, changing him into a monster I wouldn’t recognize any longer.

  “My mage-brother remains in Ninavel, occupied with other matters,” Lizaveta said. “A shame, as he would dearly love to watch you suffer. A joy I very much wish I could give him. Whispering poison into Kiran’s ears, turning him against us…you deserve such a death as I haven’t given a nathahlen in long years.”

  She was caressing the knife at her side. I struggled to think through fear. Ruslan wasn’t here? How did that make sense? I’d have sworn there was nothing in this world Ruslan considered more important than getting his hands on Kiran again.

  “How about we save the suffering and death for Ruslan to enjoy, then? You know he’ll be mad if you start having fun without him.”

  “Sometimes pleasure must be sacrificed for necessity.” She touched my brow, and needle-sharp claws sank into my mind. The past flooded me like blood from a severed artery. Our escape from Alathia, Cara leaving with Melly and Janek, Kiran and I crossing into the desert, every moment since…

  The flood ebbed. I stood trembling, sweat drenching me, my head feeling like it’d been hollowed out with a rusty knife.