The Labyrinth of Flame

by Courtney Schafer

  All I could think was that Zadikah had confessed some of the truth to her. If so, Zadikah was taking one hell of a chance, assuming she still wanted Teo kept in ignorance.

  Zadikah said, “Don’t worry, Rai. We won’t stay long. I’ll give them a bit of water and walk them back nice and slow.”

  Raishal’s reply came sharp. “It’s you I’m worried for.”

  Zadikah remained coolly impassive. Raishal muttered something under her breath and stomped off toward the house. All three of us watched her go in silence. Shadows now covered the entire basin, though the higher domes still burned fiery gold. The mournful, descending song of a rock wren carried through the cooling air.

  Zadikah turned to me. “Kiran’s explained our deal to you, I assume. I hope you intend to keep his promises.”

  “He explained,” I said. “But before I risk my life getting you into the Khalat, I want some assurance I’ll survive the aftermath. You want to breach the wards. What’s your plan after that?”

  Zadikah smiled thinly. “I’m not saying a word about my plans until you show me Kiran wasn’t lying about your skills.”

  Kiran protested, “You already have our blood. What further surety do you need?”

  Zadikah didn’t take her eyes from me. “Kiran said you were an outrider in the Whitefires. Claimed you could climb anything. In which case, you won’t need a ladder or rope to reach those barrels.” She stabbed a finger at the cave high above. “Climb up, and we’ll talk.”

  Kiran sprang to his feet, glaring. “You can’t expect him to climb yet. He’s only just recovered enough to walk. He needs time—”

  “I don’t have time,” Zadikah snapped. “I’ve delayed long enough waiting for him to wake up. If he’ll be too weak to aid me as you promised, then I need to know it now so I can make other arrangements.”

  Other arrangements that’d no doubt include selling us out to the black-daggers. It’d be stupid of Zadikah to try her original plan of using Teo to get into the Khalat without ensuring we couldn’t spill her secrets.

  “You don’t care if Dev falls.” Kiran’s hands flexed, and gods, the look on his face—I grabbed his wrist and squeezed. Hard.

  “No need to argue. I’ll do the climb. Something that short and easy, I could do blindfolded.” I wasn’t even exaggerating. Much. A fat crack snaked up the sandstone beside the undercut, and I spied enough nubbins and ledges above the lip to make a traverse to the barrel-cave a simple prospect.

  “Now there’s an idea,” Zadikah said, her eyes glinting.

  Kiran rounded on me. “You are not climbing blindfolded.”

  I pushed to my feet and suffered second thoughts. My muscles felt like I’d spent all day scrambling over unstable talus instead of lazing about in a bed. Yet the climb really did look easy, and we had plenty to gain by playing along with Zadikah’s little test.

  “You didn’t say I had to climb it blindfolded,” I said to Zadikah. “But if I haul my tired ass all the way up to those barrels, you’d damn well better explain your plans afterward.”

  “I’ll explain as much as you need to know. The same as the young scholar here has done with me.” She gave me a twist of a grin. “We all have secrets to keep, do we not?”

  Only question was whose secrets were more deadly. Kiran was dividing his scowl between us, his hands fisted tight at his sides. I clapped him on the shoulder and muttered, “Ease up. I’m not going to fall. Trust me, can’t you?”

  “You never think you’ll fall.” But he didn’t stop me when I headed for the cliff.

  Ordinarily I would’ve scrambled straight up something so easy without a thought. I wasn’t such a fool as to try that today. I meticulously performed the series of stretches I used before a serious climb, bending and twisting and arching, all the while stifling the groans that wanted to escape through my teeth.

  Zadikah watched in measuring silence. Kiran fidgeted, worry still printed on his pallid face. His fingers twitched as if wanting to draw sigils in the air. That worried me more than anything. If I did fall, Suliyya grant he wouldn’t do something truly idiotic like cast.

  Damn it, I wasn’t going to fall. I took a deep breath and put my hands to the crack. I’d learned long since that sandstone wasn’t half so smooth as it looked. Desert rock was surprisingly grippy under boot soles and fingers, though it did require more care with balance than granite. I twisted my hands to lock them against the crack’s walls, and pulled up.

  I hadn’t felt so weak on a climb since…since ever. By the time I got halfway to the cave, my legs were trembling and my forearms burning. Sweat stung my eyes and trickled down my neck. I had new sympathy for Kiran during his first days in the Whitefires. I shut out pain and concentrated all the more fiercely. New outriders often assume climbing’s purely about strength, but it’s far more about balance and leverage.

  Yet a climber does need some strength, and mine was giving out faster than I’d ever dreamed possible. A mere bodylength from the cave’s lip, I knew I was in serious trouble. Cramps racked my muscles, and it was all I could do to cling to the rock. Two more moves and I’d reach safety, but I had a terrible feeling that the instant I released one hand’s grip, the other wouldn’t hold, and I’d pop straight off the cliff. The fall would be onto sand, not rock, which meant I’d stand a chance of surviving if I didn’t land on a swordplant. But I wouldn’t come away unscathed.

  I could yell down to Zadikah and Kiran to put up the ladder. But if I admitted defeat so readily, what would Zadikah do?

  Fuck if I’d give up on a climb this easy. Only two more moves. I could do this. I concentrated upon my trembling left hand, willing it to hold. Now, to reach—

  Whack! I nearly let go in surprise as nail-studded wood smacked into the cliff mere inches away. The ladder! I twisted and saw Kiran scrambling up with Zadikah bracing the spar from below.

  I snarled at him, “What are you doing? I can make it, I’m almost there—”

  “Forget showing off. We need to get up to the cave now.” Kiran leaned to grab my belt. “Zadikah saw Raishal signal from the house. A stranger is coming. Zadikah thinks it could be one of the black-daggers hunting for us. You and I need to hide.”

  Fuck, this was just what we needed. I levered myself onto the spar, embarrassingly grateful for Kiran’s steadying grip, and forced my barely functional muscles to push me up and over the cave rim.

  Kiran helped me struggle over the barrels to hide in the narrow gap behind them. We had to jam in together so tight against the cave’s back wall that I could barely breathe. My limbs were awkwardly entangled with Kiran’s, but at least I had a view down through a crack between barrels to see Zadikah below. She’d taken down the spar and was scuffing out our footprints.

  Kiran said in a shaky whisper, “If it’s one of the black-daggers…Dev, they know too much. And I didn’t tell Teo or Zadikah about the men I killed.” I could feel his heart pounding where his chest was pressed against my back.

  “Whatever comes of this, we’ll deal with it.” My own whisper came out far more confident than I felt. I clung to the barrel in front of me and prayed with silent desperation for the touch of Khalmet’s good hand.

  Chapter Seven

  (Kiran)

  “Zadikah. Ashami rakkas veyul taz.” A female voice rang out below, gutturally accented in a way that jolted Kiran’s heart all the harder against his ribs. Was it the godspeaker herself who had come to search them out? He couldn’t see around Dev, who was blocking much of the crack between barrels.

  Zadikah’s response was coldly polite. “Nasham. If you’ve come seeking a healer, Teo’s at the house.”

  Kiran squirmed higher and gained a sightline over Dev’s sweat-damp hair, at the price of a rock protrusion jabbing into his back. The angle through the crack was wrong to see Zadikah, but the approaching Nasham was in sight, loping through the spinebrush. She wasn’t the godspeaker but a middle-aged clanswoman with knife-hard eyes and not a shred of fat on her angular frame. Dark tattoos s
piraled down her sinewy arms, and a strip of coppery cloth held back a wild tangle of graying curls.

  Nasham halted at the edge of the spinebrush. “Still you refuse to speak your birth tongue? Pig-stubborn as your aj-raddin father. Shaikar was wise to gift me with sense rather than pride. He knew I’d need it to deal with a daughter like you.”

  Nasham was Zadikah’s mother? Unlike night-dark Zadikah, she didn’t appear to have any Sulanian blood. Yet she did share Zadikah’s square jaw and proud nose.

  “I’m my father’s daughter, not yours,” Zadikah said, still cold. “Isn’t that what you said when you announced to all the clan how he had corrupted me with his foreign gods and his city ways? I am no black-dagger.”

  Kiran’s breath hissed through his teeth. So much for any hope Zadikah’s mother hailed from some other more innocuous clan.

  “You’re the one who chose exile,” Nasham said. “I hear you go around boasting to everyone that your kin-ties are severed. As if ties of blood could ever be broken! Your exile can end any time you bury your gods-cursed pride and heed the words of Shaikar. But exile or no, you are still and always vashaidah.”

  Zadikah muttered something that had the ugly sound of an insult. Unwilling sympathy swept Kiran; he knew exactly the frustrated anger Zadikah must feel at her mother’s words.

  Nasham flicked a hand in exasperated dismissal. “I didn’t come to argue with you.”

  “Why did you come?” Zadikah demanded.

  “I am hunting.” Nasham bared her teeth in a predatory grin. “I heard you returned from Prosul Akheba the same night a certain quarry escaped us. Two young sivayyah who claim to be prospectors from Ninavel…” She described both Kiran and Dev in exacting detail. “They drank water taken from the Ghoul’s Tongue, yet they have vanished from the canyons. It occurred to me they might have bargained with a passing traveler for aid and a healer’s care.”

  Kiran was all too aware of the rapidity of Dev’s breath and the lingering fever-heat of his skin. Had Zadikah realized how much of a struggle the ascent to the cave had been for him? If she thought Dev too weak to help her get inside the Khalat, she might well betray them now.

  Zadikah said, “What have these sivayyah done that you should poison them and hunt them down?”

  Kiran’s heart thudded loud in his ears. If Zadikah discovered Kiran was no scholar but a mage who had killed five of her kin, he feared her reaction. For all her bitterness toward her mother, Kiran suspected that her anger hid a tangle of love and loss similar to what afflicted his own heart.

  Nasham said, “Gavila heard the voice of the sacred flame. Shaikar wants these men. Especially the younger one. If we bring him to the veiled temple—ah, Zadikah, you’ve no idea what reward we shall gain.”

  Veiled temple. The phrase nagged at Kiran, but any deeper knowledge hung maddeningly out of reach. Could it be the same temple Ruslan had taken him from as a child? He fought to summon any scrap of recollection.

  Zadikah spat a vicious laugh. “Nothing sacred spoke to Gavila. The veiled temple—ha! Might as well babble nonsense about the silent singers or the ghoul-eaters. If the tales of the temple are real and not myth, why has nobody ever seen such wonders with their own eyes?”

  A flash seared Kiran’s inner vision. For one disorienting instant, he was no longer wedged in a cramped cave, but standing in a great stone chamber. Hands clamped his shoulders with bruising force, holding him in place before a dais of black marble. Within a silver ring inscribed on the dais, a shimmering veil of azure flame rippled and twisted. Four adults in scarlet robes flanked the dais, one at each corner, staring with reverent intensity at the sheet of flame. A haunting song of inhuman purity echoed in the chamber, soaring and diving in time with the fire’s mesmerizing dance, but the mouths of the adults did not move.

  The vision vanished. Kiran was left blinking into the bloody light of a desert sunset with a high ringing in his ears and a startled certainty in his heart: whatever the veiled temple might be, he’d once been there.

  A body shoved against his. He recoiled, but it was only Dev twisting around to whisper, “What’s wrong?”

  Kiran realized he was trembling, his ikilhia heaving against his barriers in sullen, frothing waves. He shook his head in silent dismissal. Nasham was speaking, and he wanted to hear.

  “…still so jealous that Gavila was chosen by Shaikar, and not you?”

  “I’m not jealous,” Zadikah snapped. “I never have been. I just can’t understand why you all swallow such obvious lies.”

  “Gavila doesn’t lie.” Nasham spoke with the labored patience of an adult correcting a petulant child. “I know in the early days when she was yet growing into her gift, there were misunderstandings, misinterpretations…”

  Zadikah’s snort was eloquent with skepticism. Yet Gavila wasn’t lying. Not entirely. Someone had indeed spoken to her, whether by spell, or…or otherwise. The more Kiran heard, the more his conviction grew that the source of her supposed dream wasn’t Ruslan.

  That only heightened his fear and confusion. He knew why Ruslan wanted him. If demons had sent Gavila’s dream, he had no knowledge of their purpose.

  Unless the demons sought him on Ruslan’s behalf. Kiran’s chest constricted. Were he and Dev too late to stop Ruslan making an alliance? Images of the bloodied, mutilated corpses of Vidai’s victims cascaded behind his eyes. Their eyeless faces blurred and changed to those of Lena, Cara, Melly, Dev…

  Zadikah and Nasham’s arguing voices seemed thin and far away, lost beneath the wild pounding of his heart. Kiran struggled to focus.

  “…those days are long gone. Gavila has proved the truth of her visions a hundred times over. Like now! She told us to watch for a man who looked the very image of Shaikar’s children—and just as she said, he came. Beautiful as one of the Ghorshaba and cruel as Shaikar himself could wish, when he revealed himself. But perhaps this is not news to you. Come, Zadikah. Tell me where he is, and you too can earn Shaikar’s favor. He will gift us as he did his first-born children, and we alone among mortals shall wield his fire.”

  “What a precious pile of bat dung,” Zadikah sneered. “Go tell Gavila her lies won’t work on me. I’ve no interest in vague promises about a mist-and-magic future. If I want a better world, I’ll make one for myself.”

  “Ah yes.” Nasham paced closer. “You turn a deaf ear to Gavila’s god-given words, but you throw yourself at the feet of a southern spymistress. We heard about your plans for Prosul Akheba. It’s idiocy to scrabble about with city fools rather than earn a god’s favor and change the world, but if you’d rather grub in the sand, well. I have another offer. Lead us to the man Shaikar requires, and we will join your cause. Your mistress has gone begging for warriors and convinced only a scant handful of fools to aid her. How pleased will she be to have an entire clan of Shaikar’s fiercest fighters at her command?”

  Zadikah’s voice soared high in surprise. “You speak for the other elders in this?”

  “I do. So I ask again: have you seen the men we seek?”

  Dev had gone as rigid as iron. Kiran couldn’t breathe, dreading Zadikah’s answer. If she betrayed them, escape would not be easy. Dev might be able to climb down from the cave without the ladder, but Kiran certainly couldn’t. Even if by some miracle he did reach the sand, running would do him no good. He was wholly dependent upon Teo and his potions.

  Slow and considering, Zadikah said, “I’ve done my best to think back, but I recall no bootprints in the sand, no hint of any sivayyah in the canyons. But if your offer stands, I’ll do my own hunting and send you word the moment I find any sign of them.”

  Why did he not feel relief? Instead he felt queasy, almost feverish, his heart still pounding in runaway rhythm. When he shut his eyes, he felt as if he were falling, the cave tilting sideways…

  Oh. Oh, no. Belatedly, Kiran focused inward. He swallowed a groan of dismay. The turmoil of his ikilhia hadn’t settled. It had increased to a discordant roil that worsened by the instant.r />
  He’d used no magic, nothing that would cause this. It hadn’t even been an hour since he last swallowed one of Teo’s potions. Yet his head throbbed in warning, his vision blurring. He clutched blindly at Dev.

  Hands caught his wrists. A sharp, worried whisper filled his ear, but Kiran couldn’t spare the effort to comprehend Dev’s words. He was too busy fighting a frantic, losing battle against his ikilhia’s slide toward chaos. His barriers were thinning despite all his efforts to shore them up. If they crumbled…Kiran shuddered and forced out a desperate plea.

  “Get Teo. Hurry.”

  * * *

  (Dev)

  “Kiran!” He was shaking like an aspen leaf in a windstorm, his eyes squeezed shut, his teeth bared. Mother of maidens, of all the times for him to need Teo’s aid! Nasham was still gabbing away at Zadikah, something about joining forces to hunt. No way to yell for help without her hearing. If we revealed ourselves and Zadikah lost all chance of secrecy, she might well turn on us.

  I feared Kiran dying more than I feared the black-daggers. I sucked in a breath to shout—then paused.

  Zadikah had already lied to Nasham about us. If I could give her some advantage over Nasham, even a small one, maybe she’d keep on backing us.

  I yanked open Kiran’s shirtlaces and snatched the copper circlet of the sleepfast charm from his inner pocket. My free hand swept over the cave floor, hunting for shards of rock. Lots of pebbles, but nothing bigger and no time to search further. I grabbed what shards I could and slithered onto a barrel.

  Thirty feet below, Nasham stood facing Zadikah. Neither woman was looking up.

  “…have a care, Zadikah, if you insist on hunting alone. We elders don’t wish this known outside the clan, but the younger sivayyah’s touch is—”

  Oh, shit. I flung a shower of rocks down onto Nasham with desperate force. She reacted with a climber’s swift instinct, jumping for the overhang’s protection with her arms covering her head. Blood bloomed where shards struck her tattooed skin.