The Labyrinth of Flame (The Shattered Sigil Book 3)

by Courtney Schafer

  The fire circling him died to a guttering glow. With the absolute control afforded him by the mark-bond, Ruslan no longer needed such crude forms of containment.

  Ruslan beckoned. Helpless to resist, Kiran staggered to the anchor stone. He knelt at Ruslan’s feet with his head tipped back, his throat bared. Ruslan’s voice echoed in his head. Did you think to escape me? Never, akhelysh. Now you will pay for every breath of pain you have caused me.

  “Now!” Kiran croaked. Not to Dev, but to the demon hidden within him.

  A burst of violet light outlined Dev. The demon appeared at his side, predatory and smiling. He gripped Dev’s wrist and blurred forward to pounce on Mikail, dragging Dev with him.

  Mikail twisted away, magefire crackling wild around him, but the demon locked an arm about his throat and forced him to his knees. Dev yanked against the demon’s hold on his wrist, yelling. Beside Kiran, Marten groaned and stirred.

  The demon grinned at Ruslan over Mikail’s head. “Your faithful apprentice shares no kinship with us. When I take him, he will burn screaming in our fire.” The air around Mikail blurred.

  Ruslan cried out in mingled anguish and fury. His will abandoned Kiran to focus with diamond precision on one violent lash of magic, reaching to tear Mikail from the demon’s grasp.

  In the instant of Ruslan’s distraction, Kiran slapped his hands against obsidian, focused his mind on a spell pattern he’d learned long ago, and plunged his will deep into the conduit leading to the labyrinth’s heart.

  The demon laughed and vanished, taking Mikail and Dev with him. Ruslan whipped around, his will refocusing on Kiran—too late. Kiran drew power without check or barrier, and the labyrinth answered. A raging cataract from Ninavel’s confluence blasted down the conduit, pouring straight into Kiran’s ikilhia, a rush of power far too great for one mage to contain.

  Kiran’s body and soul shrieked together in agony, his flesh burning from the inside out, the remnants of his ikilhia shredding away.

  But Ruslan howled with him as power poured in a lethal flood along the mark-bond. Ruslan fought to impose his will through Kiran onto the labyrinth to stop the torrent—but Kiran had set no bounds on the channel. Once opened, the conduit could not be closed while power still roared through it. Confluence energy spewed forth in an unceasing flood like blood gushing from an artery. The latticework of the labyrinth itself shuddered under the strain, strands breaking free, arcs of flame boiling out, the entire construct shredding apart.

  We burn together, then, Ruslan said, each word seared bright with agony and bitter defiance. If love was my weakness, as Lizaveta foresaw…such bonds as you and I share cannot be broken. Come; we’ll join her in the fire.

  Centuries of memories flickered through the torrent ripping Kiran apart. Strange lands, stranger peoples, a thousand sights and books and spells…a youthful Ruslan, laughing, full of pride and hope, racing with Lizaveta through a garden bright with cascading flowers…an adult Ruslan, harrowed by shock and grief, holding Lizaveta close as their tears mingled, and they whispered vows of revenge for the death of their beloved mistress…long years later, Lizaveta’s hand warm on Ruslan’s shoulder as he smiled down at a sleeping Mikail and Kiran…

  If Kiran still had eyes, he would be weeping; not at the loss of himself, but of all that might have been. Pain shrieked at him to dissolve into the flood and gain oblivion.

  But he had promised Dev to fight to his last breath. He clung to the demonfire in his soul and the spell pattern in his mind, until the flood ripped his last fragments of self away.

  * * *

  (Dev)

  Traveling demon-fashion usually meant an interval of utter darkness, all my senses dead. Not this time. A sharp, cold pain sliced through my chest, like Mikail slashing a knife made of ice through my insides—but before I could scream, the pain vanished. Yet I felt as if storm winds buffeted me; as though I’d fly clean away into the dark, if not for the demon’s manacle-tight grip on my wrist.

  “Take me back!” I yelled—or tried to. No sound reached my ears. My heart thudded in frantic rhythm, terror for Kiran running hot through my veins. Without me and the Taint, he didn’t have a prayer of survival.

  All at once, I was back in the workroom, sprawled on scorched stone between cooling runnels of slagged silver. The walls were charred and cracked; in some spots, stone blocks had fallen into piles of sharp-edged rubble. Through yawning gaps, I glimpsed the slender, soaring spires of Reytani district, Kelante Tower among them, untouched and serene. A relief; I’d half-thought to see all of Ninavel crumbled into rubble and ash like Prosul Akheba.

  No sign remained of the labyrinth’s arched gate. The workroom was echoingly empty…except for me, a limp, corpse-gray Mikail with blood trickling from his ears and mouth, and the demon. Who didn’t look so great, either. Its skin no longer gleamed stark white, but had dulled to the color of old snow. Its black braids were limp, its eyes faded to dim embers.

  “What happened? Where’s Kiran?” But I knew the answer. Gods all damn him, he’d burned himself up right along with Ruslan. Marten was dead too, nothing left of all three of them but this chalky layer of ash. I’d wanted Ruslan destroyed, wanted Cara and Melly forever safe from him, but not like this, never like this. I howled into the terrible mental silence where Kiran had been, You said you didn’t want to die! You promised you would fight!

  The demon gripped my shoulders. Cold seared from its hands straight through to my skin. “I severed your bond to our fire, but your bond to Kiran remains. Keep reaching for him!”

  It thought Kiran was alive? I choked back questions and strained my mind, seeking the least hint of his presence—and oh, gods! Felt a distant, dying spark.

  The demon hissed, eager. “As I thought. His flesh could not sustain such power, but his soul was rich with our fire, and that is sterner stuff. Hurry, you must summon him, or the pattern of his self will fray too far and be lost.”

  “Summon him how?” I demanded.

  The demon hissed again, this time harsher, weighted with frustration. “You know the taste of his soul far better than I. Reach for him, call forth all you can of who and what he is, and I will do the rest. Hurry, ratling!”

  A mage might know what the demon intended, or how to pull off this summoning properly. I had no clue, but fuck, I wasn’t going to argue. I reached for that guttering spark and sent a mental shout.

  Kiran! Behind his name lay every memory I had of him: his cautious reserve when he first pretended to be my apprentice, his wide-eyed, eager wonder in the mountains, his stubborn determination to escape Ruslan, his unstinting loyalty as a friend…

  I felt the demon doing something. Chill tendrils slithered through my head, reaching along the bond and weaving my memories into a net that combed some unknowable sea.

  Was it working? I didn’t know. Couldn’t feel any response to my repeated calls.

  Kiran! Get back here, damn you. You said you wanted to live. Don’t you dare prove yourself a liar!

  More memories: the shy brilliance of his smile, the clear, unexpected sound of his laughter, the hunched line of his shoulders when he was nervous, the stark pallor of his tearstained face after Prosul Akheba burned, the desperate strength of his clasp on my hand when we’d run for Ruslan’s workroom, the love that had shone from him…

  KIRAN!

  The air shimmered before me, and Kiran appeared. Naked, crouched in a ball with his head hanging low.

  A strangled cry exploded out of me. My relief was so great I couldn’t even stammer his name, for all I’d been yelling it in my head.

  “It hurts,” he said in a cracked, startled voice. Shuddering waves of pain washed along our bond; I cringed in sympathy. “Why does it hurt? I feel—as if I’m about to fly into pieces—” He was shaking. The outline of his body wavered, as if he were a mirage that’d vanish any instant.

  “Kiran!” I stumbled toward him, but the demon jerked me back.

  “Careful.” Its warning held not the least tr
ace of mockery. “He may have survived the transition, but he knows little yet of control.” The demon stretched out its free hand to Kiran, and its voice softened. “You hurt, child, because you’ve been born anew. Into fire, not flesh. Such a birth always brings pain. Well I remember the agony of my own crossing, and how long it took to fade.”

  “What?” I craned around the demon. “Kiran! Talk to me. What happened?”

  Kiran raised his head, and I recoiled. His eyes were pits of blue flame.

  “Dev?” His uncertainty struck to my heart. “I remember casting, Ruslan and I dying together, the labyrinth dissolving with us—I fought to live, as long as I could, but in the end all was fire. Then I heard you call my name…”

  Through the bond, I experienced what he had: the desperate imperative that yanked him back from oblivion, joined by insistent tendrils of magic that sought out the fading strands of his self and forced them back together, pain rising as his soul struggled to recast its old, familiar pattern from a strange new medium.

  I rounded on the demon. “What did you do? You said we could call him back, not—not make him into one of you!”

  The demon made an exasperated chuffing noise. “Did I not say his flesh couldn’t survive? His blood held so much of our fire I thought with my help he might successfully shed your realm to become a child of ours, a leap all my kind once made. But while he is now our kin in truth, he is not the same as us. We were never human, not even when we were creatures of flesh.”

  Kiran pressed his hands to his face, then held them out before him, turning them slowly over. No scales marked his skin, and he certainly wasn’t sexless; aside from those disturbing, fiery eyes, from what I could see he still looked perfectly human.

  Staring at his hands, Kiran said, “I knew there was a price, but…that’s why I see only magic overlaid with a…a ghost of flesh? This body is illusion?”

  He’d clamped down on the bond, pulling back as much as he could from me, but my gut twisted at the suppressed horror in his voice. Oh gods, Kiran!

  The demon said, “When you walk this realm, you appear as your soul’s memory of what you once were. As you gain control, you can enhance the illusion. Touch flesh without harming it; fool a mud-creature’s sight entirely, as we rarely bother to do. But your own eyes will always see the truth.”

  Kiran shut his blazing eyes; the air around him blurred. Strain creased his face, and the blur vanished. “What of Ruslan? You say you believed me strong enough to survive. His strength was a thousand times greater. Must I fear he too escaped death?”

  My spine went cold. Shit, I hadn’t even considered that. I glanced nervously around, afraid to see a vengeful Ruslan appear in a blaze of magefire.

  The demon said, “The fire in his blood was strong, yes, the strongest I’ve ever seen in a human—but it was purely of this realm, not of ours. Whereas you…you were more than halfway a child of fire already, yet even then, you could not take the last step without my help. If you seek proof of your master’s death, look within, cousin. Your bond-sigil is shattered. Your soul is free.”

  Belatedly, I realized the skin of Kiran’s chest—illusory though it might be—was clean and unmarked. Ruslan’s red and black sigil had vanished.

  Stunned wonder flowed from Kiran. “It’s true,” he said, soft and amazed. “The mark-bond is gone. I never thought I would see this day.” But his wonder darkened into grief—not for himself, but for Marten and all Ruslan’s other victims that had not lived to see his defeat.

  The demon said, “Free, that is, except for one last chain. Useful as it has been, it still binds you. Sever your bond to your ratling friend, and you’ll know true freedom.”

  “Don’t you dare cut it!” I was all for Kiran’s freedom, but I didn’t trust for one instant the demon’s motives.

  Kiran said, “My bond to Dev is no chain. I’ll break the link only when Dev wills it.”

  “Which I don’t,” I said loudly. “Just to be clear.”

  The demon chuffed, its fanged teeth showing. “As you prefer, cousin. Humans live short enough lives. Time enough when this one dies for you to cast off your ties of infancy.”

  The fire in Kiran’s eyes blazed brighter yet. “You sound like Ruslan. Just because nathahlen lives are short doesn’t mean they’re worthless.”

  “Oh, some few are interesting,” the demon said. “Look at you. The first human in all the ages of the world to follow our path into the fire…ah, child, you’ll shake every lineage right out of complacency.”

  And into what? “So much for the talk of freedom, I see. You saved Kiran because you’ve got some plan to use him.”

  Kiran’s hands fisted. He said to the demon, “I’m grateful for your help in this fight, and even…even for my survival, after. But grateful as I am, I’m not a fool. Whatever your reasons for giving your aid, I will not blindly bow to your will. You and your kin are not my masters; either accept that, or you’d best kill me now.”

  The demon laughed, piercing and sweet, and spread its slender hands. “Peace, cousin! You need not fear I seek to enslave you. The only bonds we children of fire accept are those of blood-right, and you have renounced all kinship. Yes, I shall rejoice in the ripples your very existence will send through our realm, but I make no demands on you.”

  “Yet,” I muttered, but Kiran wasn’t listening. He’d caught sight of Mikail’s prone body.

  “Mikail…” Kiran moved with a demon’s blurred speed. Caught off guard, I flinched back. Kiran sank to his knees at his mage-brother’s side.

  “He lives, just as you asked me to ensure,” the demon said. “Though for how much longer, I cannot say.”

  Kiran looked stricken. “The damage to his ikilhia and mind is worse than Marten endured. He can’t even draw power to heal.”

  “Good thing,” I said. Otherwise I’d have been dead long since.

  A wave of apology swept me. I know, Kiran said. But when Mikail had the chance to kill me, he didn’t take it. Besides… A tangle of images flickered into my head, full of a younger Mikail comforting Kiran, pleading with Ruslan on Kiran’s behalf, enduring punishments for his sake, all of it colored with regret and anguish so sharp I winced to feel it.

  Gods all damn it! Whatever Mikail might’ve done for Kiran, mere moments ago he’d been doing his best to slice me into ribbons. I countered Kiran’s images with the terrible memories of Mikail twisting his knife in my chest, carving my body into ruin while I howled in agony.

  Kiran jerked as if he were the one under the blade, but I wasn’t done. “Fuck Mikail. It’s Cara and Melly who need help.” The Watch had to have captured them, and in the wake of the border wards’ destruction, the Council would be pissed. Maybe they wouldn’t hurt a kid, but Cara hadn’t that protection.

  We had to go rescue them. I grabbed for Kiran’s arm, forgetting the demon’s warning. My fingers touched cold so severe it burned like fire. I yelped in startled pain, jerking my hand back.

  Kiran checked his own instinctive reach, his dismay sharp in my head. The pain in my hand faded—my fingers still looked healthy and brown, not the ghastly gray of frostbitten flesh I’d feared to see—but my distress only grew. If he couldn’t touch anyone to bring them through the demon realm, how would we get Cara and Melly away from the Watch?

  Kiran yelled at the demon, “Tell me how to touch Dev without hurting him!”

  Unruffled, the demon said, “Did you learn that rigamarole you call casting in mere moments? It will take you time to learn control, cousin.”

  “How much time?” I demanded. The Council wouldn’t sentence Cara right off, but gods, I didn’t want to leave her and Melly in Alathia one moment longer than necessary.

  The demon only gave a disinterested flick of a hand.

  Kiran said to the demon, “You could seek Cara and Melly for us.”

  “No,” the demon said with a fanged smile. “I prefer for you to be motivated to learn the ways of fire.”

  Asshole. This was its revenge for Kira
n keeping his bond to me.

  Kiran said hesitantly, I can offer to sever the bond in exchange for the demon’s help.

  Every last spark of his reborn soul was screaming that he didn’t want to lose the connection to me, but for Cara and Melly’s sake, he was willing. He’d do anything for us.

  I let him feel how deeply I appreciated that—and my certainty that severing the bond was the wrong path to take. No more sacrifices! Don’t you give that viper any more ground. We’ll figure this out, you and me. We’ll rescue Cara and Melly without need for any demons.

  That sparked a new worry in Kiran. He turned to the demon. “What about the ssarez-kai? Did they flee when Ruslan re-anchored the labyrinth?”

  “Yes,” the demon said, smugly satisfied. “Nor will they trouble you in the halls of flame. I told you I’d sent word of our struggle to my former kin. When the ssarez-kai fled their hearthfire, fearing to be destroyed, they found the madrek-zal lying in wait. My former kin triumphed; this kazhi—territory, I think you would say—is now theirs.”

  “Aha,” I said, understanding. “Like you hope to be. You’re angling for these madrek-zal to let you be part of their clan again, in reward.”

  “Perhaps.” The demon hadn’t taken its attention from Kiran. “Cousin, if you wish to find your ratling friends, you must retreat with me to our fire. Do you not feel your pain growing? Your death-casting has left mere threads of power where the great sea once stood. Barely enough for you and I to walk this realm of mud; not enough for you to stay long, newborn as you are.”

  Kiran’s head rocked back. “The confluence, gone…my spell worked, then?”

  “The confluence is gone?” Sudden horror froze my heart. “Mother of maidens, Kiran—did you do what Vidai tried to? Kill all the city’s mages, and—”

  “No!” He leaped to his feet. “Vidai sought to breach the containing forces and let the confluence energies burst free, uncontrolled. I cast with the labyrinth to transmute the confluence. Not into fire, as Ruslan did when he burned the temple, but into—oh, I have to see…”